Day 075 - 17 Jan 95 - Page 32
1 Q. Right. The content of the discussions in America -- were
2 they European or were there British McDonald's company
3 people at that ---
4 A. No.
5
6 Q. -- meeting? There were not?
7 A. No.
8
9 Q. Who did you discuss this with?
10 A. A Mrs. Ford.
11
12 Q. Just her or?
13 A. No, there were just the two of us.
14
15 Q. You do not know what her position was?
16 A. No, I do not. I mean, I simply asked to speak to
17 somebody who was familiar with what they were developing
18 and that was whom the company put forward.
19
20 Q. When you got back to Britain did you discuss this with the
21 UK company?
22 A. I discussed my concern that their preoccupation with
23 reducing amounts of waste going to landfill were in this
24 country likely to give rise to the sorts of problems that
25 I have averted to already, which is that -- I mean and
26 I indeed expressed this concern in America -- reducing
27 inert solids waste material is not necessarily good news in
28 terms of what that waste material is capable of being used
29 for constructively in the development of a new environment,
30 and so on. So, in that sense when I got back to the UK
31 I discussed whether or not it was likely to be a process
32 adopted in this country. At that time McDonald's, I think,
33 were unclear about which way they were likely to go.
34 I have not discussed it since.
35
36 Q. There would be no shortage of waste, would there, if people
37 did feel that they were useful avenues to go down? There
38 is no need deliberately to create waste in order to build
39 embankments, or whatever it was that you were -----
40 A. Not so far as one can judge at the moment, no.
41
42 Q. How do you judge whether the amount of packaging used is
43 excessive?
44 A. That is really quite a difficult exercise, not just in
45 the context of fast-food outlets but in terms of packaging
46 in general. I mean, my basic belief is that most companies
47 will not use more packaging than makes sense to them in
48 economic terms. I do not believe that in the product -- in
49 the production of materials and in their packaging at
50 source that they use more than is necessary.
51
52 I think it is very difficult to assess that because you
53 have to take into account so many considerations in terms
54 of hygiene and distribution systems. Where I think there
55 is room for improvement is probably at the source, at the
56 point of sale, where many companies actually provide you
57 with more bags and packages than you need at the point of
58 sale. So, I think that that is where we would make
59 judgments about excessive packaging and we do exhort all
60 the people with whom we have contact to keep that to a
