-No, you have to take the straw out and then you can recycle it.

-I did take it out! I’m not stupid, you know!

-Um, actually, it was still in the box when you tossed it in.

-Oh.

***

-Here, you can take care of this for me. It’s your volunteering project, right?

-Well yeah, but you still have to sort it out on your own. I’m only going to do this for two weeks, and I’m just supposed to give instructions, not run a processing facility.

-Oh, well I’m not really into all that environment friendly stuff and all, so maybe you could take care of it please? Bye!

***

-... That bin that you just shoved all of your garbage in was the compost bin.

-Oh, sorry, I was in a hurry and it was closer. Thanks!

***

Such were the conversations I had during my two weeks of helping fellow students sort their garbage. The volunteering organizer at the school said that “We’re a very responsible school, I’m sure you’ll only have to remind them where everything goes!” She was wrong. Nobody cared. Nobody cared about the fact that we were one of the only schools to provide compostable plates at the cafeteria. Nobody cared that the plastic spoons that they threw away, still in their packaging, would be buried underground and stay there, maybe forever.

-You’re here because the International Baccalaureate program is trying to educate the generation that will save the world.

These words, which my ECR (Ethics, Culture, and Religion) teacher seemed to believe in, seemed ridiculous, especially considering that out of the ten or so volunteers for the compost brigade (as the teachers jokingly called us), only three actually showed up when the time came.

The most valuable part of the whole experience was when a girl looked at me a bit funny (I had just suggested that she could bring a fork from home instead of throwing one away every day) and said “You’re aware that that won’t make a difference, right?”

Whoever you are, thank you for making me pause and think about what I was doing. Because you’re entirely right. I won’t make a difference. But how can I possibly go around telling people they should be more conscious of the world around them if I’m not doing the same thing?

“Just because it’s a forty-sixth-order derivative equation or something doesn’t mean that I can’t work out which side of the equation is the guilty one”

-Naomi Novik, The Scholomance book series

A change, even a small one, is better than none. Because if you don’t do anything, you’re on the guilty side.