Why is it that whenever I start to write these entries it is always nearly midnight? At this point in time I am usually unable to have a grasp of good grammar let alone a grasp of where the keys are on the keyboard. No, I am not inebriated in any way, just a bit sleepy. I was never quite the best when it comes to typing, and when I am sleepy, my lack of fingertip coordination becomes even more pronounced. I also have issues with commas. There are either too many or too few commas. If I ever hand in a paper with a million commas, I was sleepy when I wrote it.

    But, anyhow, back to the big picture, apparently I will be dead soon due to my affinity for Nalgene water bottles. (For those who are not in the know, Nalgene is a brand name of sport bottles that are known for being almost indestructible. I have seen my brother bounce one that was full of water on a hardwood floor like a basketball. It did not break.) They apparently contain this chemical whatsit called BPA which will mess up my hormones or something. Maybe I won’t be dead, maybe I will just be barren. I just checked the internet, and BPA actually stands for bisphenol A, and it is “a suspected hormone disrupter.” So the BPA will leak out of my water bottles, and into my hormones and make them go all crazy. (When I wrote that last thought about the crazy hormones I had a mental image of a large number of cell type organisms doing the waltz with little top hats or veils on their heads. Then all of a sudden a bunch of BPA cells rock into the party with pink Mohawks and nose rings and boom boxes blaring death metal and then the cells with the top hats and whatnot all start running around screaming little hormone-y screams. Or, as it were, go crazy.) (This also shows my obvious grasp of the physical appearance and design of that elusive creature, the hormone.)

    The important thing is that people are now freaking out about the whole situation. The grandmother of a friend of mine wanted my friend to throw her Nalgene bottle away because of the BPA, and I am positive that this was not the only instance where what could be considered an overreaction (to me) occurred. Probably a number of the population reacted similarly. Maybe, I am under reacting, but according to the information that I have found, (on the National Geographic website) the amount to PBA that is released by Nalgene bottles is negligible unless the bottle is washed in the high heat of the dishwasher (which I don’t do because my stickers on the outside will come off, and the Nalgene website generally discourages anyway) or filled with ethanol or corn oil (I guess this is referring to soda, which I don’t really drink and never put into my Nalgene, but I suppose that makes sense, look at what it does to teeth). No matter the warnings, I see the value in Nalgene bottles, and I will not give up mine.

    These bottles are a reasonable and cheap solution to the constant stream of non-biodegradable plastic bottles that are constantly thrown into landfills. The pointless waste needs to stop, and I believe that people need to start using reusable bottles, or at least learn to recycle the bottles that they do use. One of the things that I see on campus that irritates me the most is when people throw bottles or cans into a trash can when there is a recycling bin three feet past the trash can. I have pulled recyclables from the trash can and deposited them in a recycling bin more than once. I normally get strange looks when I do it, but it is a little gesture that I believe will help in the long run.

    I grew up in a house that recycled before we had a local recycling program with the garbage pick-up and composted before it was trendy. I believe that it is important to reuse what you can whenever you can, because the Earth can not clean up after itself, we need to help out by not making such a big mess.