Cultural wastefulness.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, it's really striking how wasteful with plastic and take-out containers customers from foreign countries are, particularly (India), (Pakistan), (China), and occasional places like the (Philippines).

Like, (South Asian from South Asia) customers will want to pack up a curry and just a spot of rice separately, even if there's not much sauce left in the curry and the rice could just sit out on top of the vegetables and not really get soaked and weird, because it wouldn't be in contact with the liquid, which is is a way that (born-here American) customers typically would pack it.

And, all of them want plastic bags to carry their boxes, even if it's just something like a single one that they could just hold in their hands and take home with them, which is what (born-here American) customers do very frequently, in addition to (rarely) bringing in their own Tupperware.

(Though, to be fair, there is one [South Asian from South Asia] guy with a [white] [born-here American] wife who does bring in Tupperware, too -- though, I suppose, that's what they call "the exception that proves the rule.") 

You also get occasional requests from these customers if they can take their take-out that they had ordered and just sit down and eat it all in the restaurant, where they would just eat everything and then throw out all those containers and bags afterwards, rather than have thought ahead and held off ordering until arrival and then used ceramic plates etc. that can be washed and re-used.

(You get that from some [lower-class] [African-American] customers, too; we always say no to such requests, to preserve the atmosphere of the restaurant for dine-in customers, and also to save us waiting on these tables with water and cleaning up after them afterwards, when they're not in a tipping relationship with us.)

It really is like a lack of an ecological consciousness, which is all the more surprising, since my understanding is that their home-countries don't have it as together pollution-wise as the (United States).

If anything, you think they would be even more attune with all that, since they have had to live more amidst the squalor that's the outcome of such wastefulness!

I've seen this a bit in my (Guatemalan) coworkers, too, like a few times I've seen them just sitting down and using plastic forks at their shift-lunch to eat rather than silverware, or sauces in the plastic take-out cups rather than put into the reusable metal cups, though one time I did see the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner correct them and tell them to use silverware, and another time I also saw the (wife) (Thai) restaurant owner correct them and tell them not to use the sauce from the plastic take-out cups.

That was probably more a profitability thing, though, then concern for the environment.