It is not a secret anymore that people prefer to stay in big cities rather than rural areas. Many reasons behind this like career opportunities, education facilities, entertainment etc. But, when there is special occasion, they will go to their hometown for celebrate it together with their family. On this event, there will be queues in some places and traffic jams in certain routes due to massive use of any kind of transportation. Then, the amount of trash on those places will increase significantly. Why? It is almost impossible to say there will be no trash in around people. The question is whether they are placed on trash bin or not. 

July 2015, the long holiday came because of muslim big holiday, Idul Fitri. Many people in cities went to their hometown for this special event. One of them is me absolutely. My uncle family and I traveled by using private car, so automatically we will be tollway user.

Beside of traffic jams, there was something I noticed along the way, the tollway cleanness. Tollways usually are supported by rest areas to make the drivers relax so they will keep focus when driving. In the rest area, there is no trash outside trash bin spotted by me. Big thanks to the officers and the management for providing trash bin and sweeping the trash. But near the rest area, there were a bunch of trash.

Since many people came to rest area and parked their cars, some people could not enter so they parked the vehicles near to rest area. Those people bought food in restaurants inside rest area and ate on their car. Why did not they eat at the restaurant. The answer is simple, the restaurant had already been full, there was no empty seat unless you waited people until their finished their meal. People who ate their food inside their car is the cause of problem. After their finished their meal, they usually were lazy to walk back to rest area for only throwing their food containers to the right place. Besides that, they were usually in hurry to be arrived at their destination so they throw the trash out to everywhere from their car windows.

It was quite irritating for me because I believe they are educated enough to understand how important putting the trash to trash cans is. So, I guess it is about habits.

At that time, I witnessed some children were told by their moms to throw their trash away incorrectly. I was really sad and disappointed because I expected their moms to teach them the correct way. Actually, to avoid a conflict, I remained silent when the children did what their moms ordered. After their moms gone, I told the children carefully for not copying something wrong or having the initiation in the first place, so they will put the trash correctly before their moms ordered.

Those children were smart. They quickly understood what I said so they realized what they did was wrong. But something I worry about them is, will they remember what I had said in the next time? Because, if they remember every time, they will accustom their selves to dispose waste in disposal cans.

The conclusion that I have got from this occasion is being educated or uneducated is not really significant enough to make people care about the environment. I guess a professor can be one of those doers as long as ignorance and selfish are still the priorities. They think the trash will be collected by tollway officer because they have paid for tollway ticket and it must be the part of tollway service.