Plastic Soup

Road Trip

We rode from Santa Cruz to Santa Monica. Endlessly through the California landscape. Pump jacks, Harley Davidsons, long-haul semis, endless nut and orange orchards, garlic farms, ranches full of cattle, a whole lot of nothing, and endless rolling hills until we approached Los Angeles … Images of James Dean, Easy Rider and Lucky Luke came to mind.

The most beautiful part of the trip rolled through the Pacheco Pass. After hills which looked real sheared, we came across miles of fields covered in fresh snow. Snow? In 79°F? It turned out to be fields stretching far out and covered with white sparkling plastic …

We then hit Interstate 5, on which we drove southwards for hundreds of miles. After my blog about the cleanliness of the Pacific Coast Highway (Route 1), the translator Skyped me to say that I may have a false impression about American highways based on that particular highway. Here, it was obvious that he was right. Entangled on both sides of the highway were full trash bags, thrown out from cars, food containers, long strands of agricultural plastic sheeting blown off from trucks, inner tubes, pieces of torn rubber, whole tires, even whole wheels.

The translator wrote how when he came to the Netherlands, he was struck by how clean everything was. He found that we in the Netherlands are lucky to have a government that takes care in maintaining our streets and highways so that they stay so clean

That got me thinking. Why am I bothered by so much government intervention? Because the impression comes to mind that people can or will take no responsibility. Aren’t we all just like spoiled children who throw their rubbish on the ground after themselves, in the full knowledge that their parents will surely pick up after them?

So can’t we have a better environment without the government? We need government to ban the handing-out of plastic bags (as Ross Mirkarimi has done in San Francisco), or even better to restrict all disposable plastic–from plastic cutlery to food packaging.

But at the same time, I think that the role of the government as enforcer and solution provider should not be allowed to become too great. They should rather create the conditions whereby we ourselves take the initiative and responsibility beforehand. We could step up to the plate, if more subsidies were provided for environmental education, recycling and waste processing projects.

With some allowance from our parents we will grow into mature adults.

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