An estimated one out of every 500 Americans is homeless
Unarmed noncombatant civilian women and children are being bombed, shot, and starved to death.
There has been a nearly 70% reduction in wild vertebrates worldwide since 1970
The leading cause of death among children and teens in america is firearms
Privileged westerners could do something about these things, but they are sipping their pumpkin spice lattes and congratulating each other for putting their shopping carts back because, you know, it's the ultimate test of moral righteousness. Ugh.
You're not looking at this correctly.
No one congratulates themselves for returning the cart.
The point here is that the simple act of returning the shopping cart is the baseline of ethical behavior.
This is just illustrating that society's individualism is so strong that this simple act of spending 10 seconds to keep the place in order is often ignored.
Of course people that return the shopping cart can be ignorant assholes as well. But the point is that this extremely basic act is severely lacking in society. Therefore we can't expect, as you said, more advanced ethical values. Such as using one's time and energy to promote changes to other foreign countries