Just realized my household hit 500 plastic bottles saved in 6 months

Started tracking our water bottle usage back in March after seeing a stat about ocean waste. Mostly just refilling the same two stainless steel bottles from the tap. My wife laughed when I pulled out the tally sheet, but yesterday we crossed 500 bottles that didn't end up in a landfill. Anyone else keep a weird tracker like this for their own habits?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth_hart6815d ago

Actually I gotta say something here, you said 500 plastic bottles saved but that's not quite right. If you're refilling the same two stainless steel bottles from the tap, you didn't really save 500 bottles - you just didn't buy 500 single-use ones in the first place. It's more like you avoided using 500 bottles, which is still awesome don't get me wrong. I keep a running tally of days I've gone without buying a bottled drink at work, I'm at 134 days now and my coworkers think I'm nuts. But that number feels good when I think about how much trash I'm not making, same as your 500.

hannah_williams15d ago

134 days without buying a bottled drink at work? That's crazy impressive honestly I can barely go a week without grabbing a Gatorade from the vending machine when I forget my water bottle at home. Your coworkers thinking you're nuts just means you're doing something right, that's how it always goes when people actually stick to something. My tally sheet is just a piece of paper taped to the fridge with tally marks, nothing fancy but it works for us. I don't even count the avoided bottles the same way you're describing but I get what you mean, the outcome is the same either way. Good for you keeping at it that long, 134 days is no joke.

the_charles12d ago

That 134 day number is solid, beth_hart68. I don't think it matters if you call it "saved" or "avoided" because the result is still the same. 500 bottles isn't 500 bottles in a landfill. I get what you're saying about the wording, but the planet doesn't care about the technical terms, it only cares about the actual plastic that isn't floating around in the ocean. My tally sheet is just a plain yellow legal pad with a running count, nothing fancy at all. The point is we're all doing something, and that's what counts more than the semantics of it.