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ZH 
I no longer remember which lecture it was, but I still remember the brief moment when something changed inside me.
After the lecture ended that day, I followed the crowd out through the front door of the classroom. Between the front and rear doors, to my left, stood two large trash bins: one for general waste and the other for recyclables. People leaving through the rear door were also heading toward the same bins.
The crowd gathered chaotically around them, almost like goldfish fighting for food. Everyone was holding a lunch box. Some were neatly secured with rubber bands. Some still contained leftovers and used tissues, while others were completely empty and clean. Yet regardless of what was inside, people simply began throwing their lunch boxes into the bins.
There were lunch boxes in the general waste bin, and there were lunch boxes in the recycling bin. Both were filled with a mixture of different kinds of waste.
The trash had already piled up into a small mountain.
At first, I intended to do what I usually did: open my lunch box, separate the leftovers from the container, and dispose of each properly. But when I looked at the overflowing bins and the growing crowd pressing toward them, I hesitated.
My steps stopped for a moment.
Suddenly, I felt a sense of pressure. All I wanted was to get out of that crowded space as quickly as possible.
In the end, I did what everyone else was doing.
I simply tossed my lunch box into the bin without sorting anything.
Whether I sorted my waste or not, the bins in front of me would still have been just as messy. By skipping one small task I had originally intended to do, I was able to leave a little faster.
But that one careless toss seemed to break some kind of invisible restraint.
After that day, I gradually noticed that I no longer cared as much as I once had about properly sorting the lunch boxes provided at lectures.
Sometimes, when I saw a trash bin already filled with all kinds of mixed waste, a thought would immediately come to mind:
“It’s already such a mess anyway.”
In the past, I would have been willing to spend a little extra time sorting everything properly before leaving. Now, I had begun to think that if everyone else was throwing things away without sorting them, perhaps there was no point in insisting on doing otherwise.
It reminded me of something I had once heard about: the “broken windows theory.”
When a place already shows signs of disorder or neglect, does that make it easier for others to stop following the rules as well?
But when I thought more carefully about what happened that day, I realized that the problem might not have been simply that the trash bins were messy.
There were so many people crowded together, and everyone was in a hurry to leave. I did not want to stand in front of the bins for too long and block the people behind me.
Perhaps what really made me give up on sorting was the pressure to get out of the crowd as quickly as possible.
If there had been more trash bins and clearer signs showing how to separate the waste, would I have sorted my lunch box properly?
I am not sure.
Even with better facilities, if the crowd had still been just as large and everyone had still been rushing to leave, perhaps I would have made exactly the same choice.
And when the trash was already piled together and I could see everyone else casually throwing things away, how long would I have continued to insist on sorting mine properly?
Of course, none of these things justified my decision not to sort my waste.
After all, I was the one who decided to throw the lunch box away without separating anything.
But I began to wonder whether the same thing might have happened to other people as well.
Where did all those mixed-up lunch boxes eventually go?
How did the cleaning staff deal with them?
Were there other students who had originally intended to sort their waste properly but gave up because of the situation around the bins?
And how did the organizers of these lectures plan for waste sorting and disposal after their events?
I do not have the answers to these questions yet.
But perhaps this reflection is a place to start looking for them.
