Carried by the wind

On our trip into Hebei province Saturday, it was impossible for us not to be shocked by the volume of plastic shopping bags that were clinging to the trees on the sides of the country roads. As far as we could see in some areas were thousands of grocery bags. caught like storm debris in the trees and shrubs.  A year and a half ago the Central Government enacted restrictions on plastic grocery bags. This move was meant to cut down on the number of shopping bags littering the streets and filling the landfills. If what we saw in Hebei represents conditions more than a year after more limited plastic bag use, we'd hate to see what this looked like before then.

Of course, the question is, where do all these bags come from?  We were on rural roads, in between rural farming villages, miles away from the nearest Merry Mart or Wu Mart or whatever.  I thought perhaps we were near a garbage sorting facility, or a number of them, and these bags escaped in the wind. Randy's theory was that they were blown here from everywhere.  Like that piece of desert of unknown origin, perhaps it all blew in from elsewhere, and the topography keeps it all from leaving. It all collects here.

Whichever way the bags ended up caught in these groves and orchards, they probably did not originate here. In this part of Hebei, such signs of consumption and waste (the newer grocery bags are meant to be used more than once) are completely inconsistent with the austerity we saw otherwise.  At least to our eyes.