In this huge barrage of posts, I'm running out of juice in my hands, so I'm going to try to keep it short and sweet. I've ranted several times in real life to the same people about how wasteful we stupid Americans are. Every time I leave a fast food place I feel guilty for having thrown away so many bags and wrappers and spare napkins and ketchup packets, almost none of which were necessary.
And cups. Fucking drink cups. So evil. So thin that your drink bleeds through after 5 minutes, but wrapped in just enough wax to never ever biodegrade. Not only is it bad economics to pay for a drink when you can get water for free, but probably millions of those cups go in the trash every day. I stopped ordering drinks as much as I could a while ago.
What do I say to this? I don't know. I would say something rational like "Everyone carry a refillable cup in a bag or purse if you have it," but this lazy fucking country either laughs at the idea or goes "Ewww, gross!" despite the fact that you can rinse the fucking cup. Use your pop-culture-tuned brains, people. It's cool when it's called a Big Gulp. You could even hand over the cup when you hand over your money to pay for your food, and they fill it for you and bring it back. For what they save on cups, they could keep charging for refills and make a little more money.
Environmentalism is nerdy, yeah, but you don't have to drive an Insight to contribute to screwing over the planet a little less.