Day 293 - 04 Nov 96 - Page 04

     
     1        packaging witnesses back in history, whenever it was, 18
     2        months ago.  And the point I am making is, I always
     3        thought, I did not even bother to check at the time, if you
     4        identified, advertised, something as recycled, it is
     5        obviously a hundred percent recycled content.  But, in
     6        fact, all this packaging has got the recycled -- wait a
     7        minute, no, actually the small print actually says on them
     8        '72 percent', in the middle.  Well, it has got the
     9        recycled symbol on it.  It says 'recycled'.  But I have
    10        noticed on the Chicken McNuggets boxes, in small print in
    11        the middle it says '72 percent', which is the point I was
    12        going to make, it is not hundred percent recycled.
    13
    14   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  There was some evidence that very little is
    15        hundred percent recycled, because you have to feed in some
    16        new pulp, otherwise it deteriorates.
    17
    18   MR. MORRIS:   Maybe, yes.  I mean, some things are a hundred
    19        percent.  Anyway, so I have kind of snookered myself there,
    20        I have not seen the small print.  Not that anybody would
         necessarily understand it, it says 'CS 72 percent' in the
    22        middle of -- they all say...  Well, not all of them, but
    23        some of them say 'recyclable', which, as we know, the
    24        Advertising Standards Authority prevented McDonald's making
    25        those claims when they were not recycling themselves.  'Hot
    26        almond flavoured custard and strawberry pie', says it is
    27        recyclable paper.  So does the apple pie.  Then so does the
    28        fry carton - well, 'World Cup USA 1994' on it.  So the
    29        recyclable claimed we have already dealt with there.  They
    30        are obviously deceptive and considered so by the
    31        authorities in this country and in America.
    32
    33        But there was one other example which I did not...  Because
    34        I found nine cartons I did not actually look for other
    35        documents, but there was a series of documents, I do not
    36        know if Mrs. Brinley-Codd remembers exactly where they
    37        were.  They were served to us more recently.  (Pause) We
    38        had a series of OCLs, I think they were, from America,
    39        observation check lists.
    40
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:   They call them HCs, or something, do they
    42        not?
    43
    44   MR. MORRIS:   One was breakfast meat/muffins, I am sure every
    45        page is very similar in terms of what it says at the
    46        bottom.  It says 'printed on recycled paper'.  Then it says
    47        underneath that, this is page 2, handwritten 2 of that
    48        series of documents that were served, '10 percent
    49        post-consumer content, 40 percent pre-consumer content'.
    50        And this is another obvious example where I assumed if you 
    51        say something is recycled paper it was a hundred percent. 
    52        And in fact, this is only 10 percent post-consumer content, 
    53        which, we would contend, is the public's understanding of
    54        what recycled means.  So here we have something that is
    55        called recycled paper, but it is actually only 10 percent
    56        recycled.  In America, I think, they are forced to put, or
    57        have in recent years been forced to put, the percentage of
    58        post-consumer and pre-consumer content of the recycled
    59        content.  But it is still misleading that they can make a
    60        claim that something is recycled paper when it is clearly