Personal Climate Change Action

          As an assignment, for part of the semester we were told to do a personal climate change action.  For my personal climate change action I decided to refill water bottles instead of purchasing new ones, or cases of water for at least a week of the semester.  From time to time I would refill bottles, but that was usually only when I didn’t have a new one close-by to get.  When I visited home over spring break this past March a made a note to take one of the larger 700mL sport top water bottles that my mom has at home.  This was the bottle that I used to take to class throughout the week.  When I was in my room though, I would refill a smaller 500mL (16.9 oz.) Crystal Geyser water bottle that was from a case I had purchased at the beginning of the semester.  I had these bottles because I would use them to make drinks with the mixes that you pour into the bottle such as Crystal Light.

            I wanted to try this as my climate action plan because I know a lot of people, including myself, buy bottled water if not from time to time almost consistently.  I wanted to see how much could be actually saved by not buying the cases of water that most stores sell at what seems like a reasonable price.  I have also heard about the problem that there is with recycling water bottles and how much trash, including many plastics, there are not only in the landfills and thrown on the sides of roads, but in our waterways and oceans as well.

           Throughout the experiment I was able to save, in just week, about a 35 case of water bottles at about 5 bucks.  Looking back on my project I would have to say that it was successful.  Not only did I save a lot of money by not buying cases of water, although I was still buying the boxes of drink mixes from time to time, but I was also able to save quite a bit of plastic by reusing the same ones and not opening new ones. One thing that I would change after this experiment though is that I would invest in a Nalgene bottle so I would have a more durable bottle to carry around and make mixes in.