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The thing nobody mentions is that a lot of people buy a reusable bottle and then abandon it after a few months, just leaving it stashed in some corner or straight up throwing it away! Then it just ends up being another piece of plastic in the trash instead of actually saving anything. If you're really going to use it every day, then yeah it makes a real difference - a decent bottle lasts for years and you avoid hundreds of disposable plastics. But you gotta be honest with yourself about whether you're actually going to stick with the habit, otherwise it's just greenwashing that doesn't solve anything!
Your one reusable bottle alone won't make much of a difference if everyone else keeps buying disposable plastic, but if lots of people do it together it really does change the volume of stuff going to the landfill. The difference becomes clearer when you think about how one reusable bottle replaces hundreds of disposable ones over time.
A reusable bottle does make a difference, yes, but it really depends on how you use it. If you're actually going to use that bottle for years, buying tap water or water from other sources instead of disposable bottles, then you're eliminating tons of plastic from your life. A person who drinks water every day and stops buying plastic bottles avoids maybe hundreds of them per year.
What people don't usually mention is that the bottle itself also has an environmental impact in production - material, transport, energy. But if it lasts 3, 4, 5 years or more, that pays off quickly compared to how many disposables you've stopped buying. The real problem comes when you buy it, use it for 3 months and abandon it - then it's just another object that ends up nowhere useful.
Basically: it works if you have the discipline to keep up the habit. If it's the kind of thing you forget at home or that falls out of fashion, better not start. But if it's really part of your daily routine, the individual difference is concrete.
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