A bottle community

Having a community with a common goal proved to be quite helpful. Understanding others strengths and weaknesses aided me in justifying my own. By helping others with their weaknesses and benefiting from their strengths, I have become more aware of the significance of my actions.

After reading through my group members’ posts, I realized that our bad behavior stems from a common thing: convenience. It seems that all my group members felt wastefully using water bottles was a matter of not being bothered to fill up a refillable bottle. We all agree that this is not a good reason to continue behaving in such a manner. While changing this behavior may be a change in our habits, it is quite possible to do so, but maybe not as easy as we originally thought.

We seemed to have similar barriers in changing our behavior. One commonality is simply remembering the significance of change in behavior. It is very easy to turn the other cheek and be wasteful, but as time progressed, this attitude became personally repulsive (at least to me, anyway). To combat this, some of us used reminders in the form of notes. Hanging these near the door or in the refrigerator, did not allow us to forget our goals and the repulsion that was our old behavior. At this point, preserving our pride and self respect helped us make sustainable decisions. In addition, making the new behavior more convenient was a goal for all of us since the bad behavior started from a convenience issue. I introduced a two bottle system that worked for me and helped at least one other person from my group. This system started as a random thought that I wanted to try out and it proved effective and was able to be passed on to others. Making a contribution to my community was an incredible feeling. Not only do I feel good about coming up with a good idea, but also for benefiting another person achieve their goals.

In conclusion, having a community to share experiences and challenges with was probably the most crucial step in the sustainable behavior challenge. Knowing that other people are working toward the same goal puts a little pressure on me to not disappoint the status quo and maybe even a little competition to impress my community. Beyond this, the practical things I learned from each person strengthened my personal set of skills used to change my own behavior. At a higher level, community-based approaches to environmental problems seems a lot more practical to me now.