Green, clean green, straight green, bright green, organized green, clear green, light green, dark green, gray green, soft green, red green, deep green. Holland is so very clean. Red, white, and blue are the flag, topped with orange for the Queens mother birthday, the day after I arrived, 30 of April 2002.
As long time resident of Sint Maarten, I send you my first report from Holland where I seek funding to open a school in Sint Maarten.
Even the garbage bins are green, unobtrusive, inconspicuous and not out of harmony with the environment, wherever there is a house or a dwelling. There is no visible garbage anywhere. No empty bottles, plastic bags or fast food paper plates and cups. This is the first impression after the overwhelming greenness. The filth and garbage of Sint Maarten is not here. Praise the Dutch! They have found the solution for a healthy and clean environment.
It works as follows: Garbage is separated by the people who make it, and goes in designated bins, green glass in one, and brown glass and transparent glass each in different small containers that stand at places where everybody can easily reach them. Paper in another, as well as plastic. In the bin one has in front of the house goes mixed household garbage. Biological offal, food rests etc. can be put in the compost bins in certain areas, for those who produce that, restaurants, food producers. On the street bins, the private bins, a label with dots, like an enlarged braille letter, is stuck. That label contains information of ownership and is read by the computer that is part of the truck which collect garbage. It knows whose bin it is and it weighs the bin before and after emptying. It calculates the price one pays for the garbage collection... One pays for every kilo of collected garbage 25 Euro cent.
For wood, construction garbage and old furniture one pays 18.- Euro per cubic meter. One can bring it to the dump or for a fee, have a truck come for it. Disposal of broken electrical equipment, iron and paper is free.
Here you have it, the garbage story of how a rich country makes itself richer. I tell you how it works, now you act on it.
As long as Sint Maarten does not educate its uncaring population to take care of its garbage, there is little hope that it will get help from Dutch politicians who come and see. The filth, the carelessness and the total neglect for the countryside works as a psychological detriment upon those who could dispense of funds. Why should one give help to people who do not care for their own place? What would you do for someone who makes a mess and then comes to ask you for help? WouldnÕt you say to first clean up your act before giving anything? First let people do what they can do them self, before giving help with what they cannot do.
Why not separate garbage, and make on the dump certain places for different sorts of filth? Glass to the left, electrical stuff to the right, paper in the middle. Once you have a great heap, recycling companies will ship the loads away. Compress car wrecks, and let the owner of the wreck pay for it. Containers can be filled with paper for recycling. Make the people who make filth pay for the removal of it. Why continue to ignore that what must one day lead to shame, health problems and loss of tourism, toxic residues that kill plants and animals? A Herculean task, but one that will reap great rewards. The very agreeable cleanliness of Holland is something that looks unreal and impossible to me coming from the dirty roadsides where the empty bottles lay as far as they will fly from a open car window. After a bush fire, all that is exposed and it looks so poor. It looks so sick. It is the result of sick minds in stupid heads of people who have no love for their own country. Who do not deserve help or assistance, and who Holland officials certainly will not give autonomy to start on its own. A people who shows no love for its own environment is surely not ready to go on its own. I understand better now why Holland is so against Sint Maarten leaving the Netherlands Antilles, it is still in the baby state of mind, it is not yet house-clean. It still is a baby, and first needs to grow up a little more.
