Day 010 - 11 Jul 94 - Page 12
1 MISS STEEL: So how did the campaign respond to McDonald's
claim that they were going to recycle the foam?
2 A. Well, on the third Earth Day or prior to the third
Earth Day -- sorry, the third day of action which was on
3 Earth Day in 1989 -- the Clearing House circulated to its
mailing list copies of peel off labels of the address of
4 Shelby Yastrow at its corporate headquarters in Illinois
and called on members to mail foam food packaging to
5 McDonald's corporate headquarters to Shelby Yastrow, so
they would be able to better afford, because of the
6 volume, better afford to recycle foam.
7 Consequently, a large number of local groups around the
nation responded by mailing foam to McDonald's Corporation
8 headquarters to Shelby Yastrow.
9 Q. That action, what was it called?
A. It was referred to as Operation Send It Back.
10
Q. Did you hear from a source within McDonald's that their
11 mail room had been deluged with foam?
A. We understood from anonymous sources that there was a
12 great deal of foam packaging piling up in McDonald's mail
room. It is also true that in various accounts published
13 in the media Shelby Yastrow acknowledged McDonald's had
received foam, but it is essentially true that Mr. Yastrow
14 denied the degree to which we believed the foam was
actually reaching McDonald's headquarters through the
15 mail.
16 Q. So your campaign against styrofoam, the McToxics campaign
and Operation Send It Back, when did the campaign end?
17 A. The campaign ended in 1990, in November, shortly after
McDonald's announced they would no longer be using
18 styrofoam food packages; they were going to virtually
eliminate all their foam food packaging within a certain
19 period of time.
20 We and Grassroots leaders around the country concurred
that McDonald's had complied with the central issue in the
21 campaign. They had withdrawn their use of foam food
packaging from the US market. There were concerns raised
22 at the time (and maintained to this day) that McDonald's
did this only in the United States, primarily, that it was
23 probably going to continue to use foam food packaging
elsewhere.
24
It has been my experience that at least in Germany in 1991
25 in Bavaria they were using foam food packaging.
I observed this personally, and through various accounts
26 related to this trial it is apparent they continue to use
foam food packaging elsewhere in the world as well to this
27 day.
28 Q. Did you say why you thought they probably had not
withdrawn the foam in other parts of the world?
29 A. I think it is most likely due to the fact that
McDonald's did not come under the same kind of pressure in
30 other countries that the McToxics campaign placed on
McDonald's in the United States; that if that campaign had
