Trash Talk

I was returning from taking my daughter to school last week when I heard the trash trucks rumbling down the alleyway from a distance. Judging from the sound, I had just enough time to get into the house, gather up the glass, metal, plastic, and paper I’d been saving all week, and bring it out to the container supplied by my municipality for recycling.

With all the items I’d gathered from the back porch in one hand, and a paper bag full of cardboard and recyclable paper in the other, I made it to the alley in the nick of time.

I’d just set down the bin of recycling next to the recycling can from the township and lifted the lid, when I realized all at once that the truck was for trash only and not recycling. Sigh of relief. I no longer had to hurry. At that same instance, the gentleman picking up trash picked up the recycling bin I’d just carried from the porch and dumped it into the trash truck. As he was lifting it, I managed a desperate “Wait, that’s recycling, not trash.”
He dumped it anyway, and a quick strong wind blew several papers out of the bag with paper recycling and scattered them on the ground between us.

“It don’t matter,” he said.

“It really does though,” I replied. “It does to me.”

As I bent down to pick up those few scraps, he knelt to help me, and I realized that I was crying. I didn’t look up as I thanked him, and he moved away as the truck proceeded to the next house, so I hope he didn’t notice.
In that one, less than 60 second exchange, I was shaken to my core and wondering if he was right. Do the efforts of one person, one family, one town, really matter?

I believe it matters. What do you think?