Bad Bottle Behavior :(

 

After observing my behavior over the past week, I can honestly say I am ready for a change. The behavior I want to change is my usage of plastic water bottles. To better understand my current behavior, I tried my best to not throw away any bottles and let them pile up in my room. The results are quite sickening. 7 non-empty bottles have been scattered around my room in the course of a week, but in such a way that it looks like I intended to finish them. This made me realize that it is more convenient for me to just grab another bottle than search (not too hard, either) for an exiting one to reuse. I have noticed that I grab a new one if I am in a rush out the door or when I get home and I am parched. My life is not threatened by taking 2 minutes to find and fill a bottle I have already used so I have no reason not to do so. To solve my undesirable behavior, I bought a refillable bottle to use and plan to not use another disposable bottle if I can help it (so, virtually all the time).

The related article I found described research by college students to find out why students did not use refillable bottles. “‘One of the things we found in the online survey was that a lot of people had reusable water bottles, they just weren’t using them regularly,’ Weeks said. ‘We wanted to find out why'” (Kolios, 2010). They found out that students simply viewed disposable bottles as more convenient to use. This seems to fit my understanding of my behavior. The article goes on to discuss that the campus of study does not offer enough refilling stations to be convenient. Considering I pretty much live in Acopian, that should not be a problem for me as there are several refilling stations as well as one built in to my refrigerator. In addition, the students have posted reminders to bring refillable bottles to encourage their usage. For me, I simply have to add my refillable bottle to my list of things to grab before I depart for class. Since I want to change my behavior, I feel like I will not have much of a problem accomplishing my goal.

The article confirmed that changing my behavior will not take that much work. All I need to do is develop good habits and stick too them. If I cannot do that, there is something severely wrong with my personality and perception of my place on this planet. So, as to not let myself down, I had better get this behavior corrected ASAP!

Source:

Daphne Kolios. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.tuftsdaily.com/news/experimental-college-class-examines-use-of-plastic-bottles-1.2394099