“If Everyone Did” is a children’s modern classic we’d do well to read again.

No one chooses in a vacuum. What you do, say, think, and believe affect and influence people around you. You change your environment. Your decisions impact the culture.

The cumulative effect.

Sure. One single-use plastic water bottle isn’t going to have a comprehensive impact on anything. But if there are 1,000,000 single-use plastic water bottles purchased globally every minute, that has consequences.

It is not a matter of “if Everyone Did”, because everyone does.

You can’t control the 1.5 billion plastic water bottles purchased every day.

You can control your actions. You can refill your Nalgene bottle.

The cumulative effect works with kindness, as well as water bottles. Creativity and courteous driving.

Push back. Lead the way. Go against the cumulative trends.

Everything is contagious.

Make sure to spread the right things. The things that should spread. We wash hands and get shots to keep diseases from spreading. When everyone does it, it works.

Be a contagion for the things that matter, the things that make the world a better place.
And while you’re at it, grab a reusable water bottle and take it easy on the single-use plastic.

It has to start somewhere.