The Marktweg in The Hague has gone all-out orange for every major football tournament for 26 years, but this time a political party is questioning whether wrapping the street’s trees in plastic is harming them.
Every time a World Cup or European Championship rolls around, residents of the Marktweg transform their street into a sea of orange. Flags, lampposts, bins, and tree trunks all get wrapped in virulent orange decorations, primarily made of plastic.
This year, the Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) has submitted formal questions to The Hague’s municipal council about the street’s enthusiastic decor.
Primarily, they want to know what impact the plastic wrapping has on tree health and the small creatures that depend on them.
What are the concerns?
The PvdD, which has previously raised environmental objections to other Dutch traditions, argues that trees have their own ecosystem.
Diego Demaree, speaking on behalf of the party’s The Hague branch, told RTL Nieuws that insects, birds, and other small animals live in and around tree trunks. By shielding the bark in plastic, some of that life could die off… adversely affecting tree health.
The Bomen Bond (a Dutch tree-protection organisation) also shares some of those concerns.
Moisture trapped under plastic can leave bark wet and poorly ventilated for extended periods, they say, risking mould, rot, and broader ecosystem damage.
But residents aren’t having it
“We pull out all the stops every year; the whole street participates,” resident and organiser Danny van Dijk tells RTL Nieuws. According to him, the trees have never shown signs of damage.
“These trees have been in beautiful bloom for 26 years,” he says. “They are even greener than other trees.”
The plastic stays up for roughly two months, depending on how far the Netherlands goes in the tournament, and comes down completely afterwards.
Van Dijk is baffled that anyone is raising this now, given that the street has attracted worldwide media attention for years. “Is this really the first time in 26 years they’ve noticed?” he quips.
What do the experts say?
Tree specialist Nino van de Rijzen largely backs the residents.
The bark already protects the trunk, he explains, and two months of wrapping a tree in plastic decorations is unlikely to cause lasting harm. Problems only arise when something is tied around a tree for years, which is not the case here.
“The trunk of the tree is protected by bark,” he tells RTL Nieuws. “As long as no damage occurs there, you can assume that the tree itself will not suffer any damage either.”
And, despite raising the issue, the PvdD isn’t asking for the decorations to stop entirely.
“As far as we’re concerned, the street can be as orange as possible,” Demaree says, “as long as the quality of the trees remains good.”
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