Justin DeYoung
Mrs. Gelms
English 111
9-10-2013
One Small Change Can Save Millions
Writer’s Reflection: When I went to write this piece I wanted to basically show you the kind of person I
was before I made this small change in my life. Sharing an experience that seemed pretty normal and/or
common. I was hoping that people would be able to relate to it and once they did they would get more
out of my paper. I don’t think I would have really thought about this topic at all if it wasn’t for my AP
Environmental class I took my senior year of high school. The most challenging part of this essay would
probably have to be getting all of my ideas down and really focusing on doing that. When it comes to
writing essays I often half-ass the rough draft. This doesn’t really help me progress my writing in any
way, and causes me to do more work later in the drafts. And with this essay I actually made a lot of
major changes. I normally make very small minor changes and keep my final draft very similar to my
rough draft. This essay has taught me that if I really sit down I can write a pretty decent essay. I don’t
need to stress out as much about getting my ideas down in order, I just need to get them all down.
“On the end line,” my couch says with a monotone voice. The sharp noise of a whistle sounds.
My teammates and I take off for the twenty-five yard line, we touch the line and run back. “To the fifty.”
He says in that same tone of voice. We run to the fifty and come back. At this point I’m dying, I’m
completely out of breathe. Couch showed no mercy though. “To the other end line and back.”
Reluctantly my team and I somehow make it there and back. He gave us a break to get water. It was one
of those weeks where it was unbearably hot, one of those days where no matter how much water you
drank you were still thirsty. I had already gone through 3 bottles that practice, and after we finished that
running I downed another. I went home, emptied my bag, and took the bottles over to the trash and
through them away.
I didn’t think about it until I had to do research for a paper in my AP environmental class. I had
to write about something that was current and it also had to be about the world today and how humans
are affecting the Earth. Many students went straight into researching the first thing that came to their
minds. I almost did this, but for some reason I actually sat there for a while just thinking about what I
could write. There is a huge list of way that humans impact the environment, but out of all the ways
humans affect the environment I decided to go with how disposal of water bottles effect the
environment. Now, let me explain why I decided to do some more research on this; as you saw in my
little story above I have always been a very active person, whether it be sports, playing outside or even
just doing yard work. I’d always be running, lifting things or even just moving around. Now because of all
this moving around I would drink a lot of water. I mainly used plastic water bottles since they were
always so accessible. We would have cases of them in our garage since they were usually pretty cheap
to buy in bulk. I would take one or two out with me when I was working outside, or if I was running or
something like that. I drink them as I needed and once I had finished the bottle I would throw them
away. I used the biggest about of bottles during the lacrosse season. Now I don’t know the exact
number I used but I can say that it was a very large amount. (I would go through 2-3 water bottles per
practice; I practiced 5-6 times a week!) Once you add all this up the amount of bottles I used is
staggering!
Realizing that I wasn’t the only one who was using a large amount of bottles, I became more
interested in the effects that the disposal of water bottles had on the environment. I began doing some
digging and found a few sites that went into more detail of about the how we dispose of bottles. The
two most common ways to dispose of them are by either recycling and reusing them, or putting them
into a landfill. Both of these options are very harmful to the environment. I was blown away by the
amount of animals and vegetation that has been destroyed by the creation of landfills. When creating a
landfill you basically dig a hole then fill it with garbage and cover it up. You need a clear, open area to do
this. You don’t want it to be by people so landfill companies often remove forests to do so. They will
clear-cut a forest, which is where you basically clear out the entire forest, destroying the habitat of the
animals that live there and making it nearly impossible for life to prosper. With-out a proper
environment for animals and plants to live in these plants and animals can become extinct! According to
SafeBottles (A reusable water bottle producer) millions of fish, birds, and mammals die due to the plastic
in the water bottles alone. So while it seems like our current form of disposal is working, to put it In
simple terms: It’s not.
After reading all these facts and looking up all this information for my project really changed my
view on how we impact the environment. I looked around online to find different ways to help reduce
use of plastic water bottles. The best thing that I found I could do was too invested in a glass reusable
bottle by the company Zulu. They are high quality bottles made of glass and cover with rubber. They
don’t harm the environment and dramatically reduce the amount of plastic bottles being disposed. If
everyone invested in one of these we could reduce nearly half of the landfills that need to be made to
dispose of the bottles. Switching to this bottle also caused my family to do the same and we no longer
buy plastic bottles, we all just refill our reusable ones. If you want to help reduce your impact on the
environment then look into getting one for yourself. Also spread the world and help to make our world a
better place to live.