Americans are Trashy

This happens to me all the time but it's something that I still can’t get over.

In a fast-food line, and the college-aged woman goes to hand me my bag of food packed full of sodium, MSG, and who knows what else. She then hands me my drink and straw, and carefully, before touching it I exclaim;

"YOU CAN KEEP THE STRAW."

Having no real investment in the lives of sea turtles, I just don’t want to make unnecessary trash. Plus in my opinion, I’m skilled enough to set the cup in my console with the lid off and consume it while I drive.

I always picture millions of these things being handed out each day. I must use at least 150 of them annually so I figure this is an easy way for me to prevent that many more of them from ending up in a landfill. Anyways, the chick then proceeds to throw this unused, crisp, clean, individually wrapped straw into the trash. Thing is, they almost always do this when I refuse it at the drive-throughs. I’d say 4/5 times that’s what they do. I'm honestly curious, so I ask this chick, “why did you do that?” She looks at me and says, “you said you didn’t want it?” I knew at that point trying to inquire further was a waste of both of our time, but driving away I still didn’t get the thought process here. It's unused, why not just give it to the next driver who I guarantee thinks not using a straw is heresy? This isn’t a covid thing either I’ve been refusing them for years now and it's had no influence on the outcome.

I feel like this is just how Americans are. It’s just easier to toss it in the trash, not a lot easier but slightly easier than setting it back in the straw box. The path of least resistance I suppose.

Every time this happens I start to think about all the other times I see a conscious choice by everyday Americans not to prevent making unnecessary trash. At work I see gloves and banana peels in the recycling bins which are clearly marked then look to see qualified recyclables in the trash. The lady at the grocery store triple bags half my groceries despite me bringing my own bags, and most people grab 35 napkins to eat a bagel with. I think I tend to be patriotic overall, but I never understood the average American's disregard for trying to reduce the amount of trash produced each day. If you ask me, being trashy just isn’t too classy. Thoughts?