Have you ever wondered what happens to all those plastic water bottles? Well I did. And what I learned was devastating. I learned that in 2006 Americans used about 50 billion disposable plastic water bottles. And here's the scary part- 38 billion of them ended up in a landfill. I was overwhelmed by the stats. I had seen a campaign done by Nalgene called Refill Not Landfill which was created to reduce disposable water bottle waste. Using the elements of the campaign I launched my own initiative in Boston. Why? Because I care about the environment and my children's future.

My environmental side initially emerged from my involvement with sports. At Providence College, I was a division one athlete in lacrosse. Later, I went on to coach lacrosse. I've run 6 marathons and I'm currently an ultimate bootcamp instructor. It all started when I really took notice of the big coolers of water for the players and everyone drinking out of disposable cups. Every time someone went up for water, they would get a new cup. The waste just piled up. Same idea with disposable water bottles. Reusing them isn't healthy, so new ones are purchased and then thrown away. Like the stat said, thirty-eight billion in one year are thrown away.

My wife is my clincher. She works at Cercone Brown, a public relations agency in Boston. Nalgene is a client of theirs. That's where I learned of the Refill Not Landfill Community Sustainability Program. They launched it in the City of Davis, California. Davis put restrictions on the city buying of plastic water bottles to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with the production, shipping and recycling of the bottles. When Nalgene learned about Davis's green efforts, they offered their bottles as a solution. Nalgene donated 1,100 bottles to Davis. Davis split the donated bottles in half. Half were given to city employees to use in place of disposable bottles and the other half were used to promote Davis's sustainability program through sale or free give-away. Every bottle recipient pledged to always use their Nalgene instead of a disposable water bottle. If each person previously drank and threw one water bottle a day, reusing the Nalgene bottle daily saved more than 400,000 plastic bottles from going into a landfill in one year. Since then, Monroe County, NY has created a similar program with Nalgene. And Nalgene is working to get more communities across America involved.

Learning about that inspired me to get more involved. So, first, I took the Filter for Good Pledge (check out my Action Requests) and I encourage everyone I know to do the same. Now I want to get Boston more involved. Help by backing my cause to help Boston reduce (eliminate!) their waste from bottled water.