Would you pay $8 a day to eliminate single-use plastics from your life, or do you think individual spending can't fix a systemic problem? A friend of mine tried this for a month — she spent about $240 switching to refillable containers, bamboo utensils, and shampoo bars. She said the hardest part wasn't the money, but the time: driving 20 minutes to the nearest zero-waste store, explaining to cashiers why she brought her own jars. Meanwhile, her city recycles only 9% of its plastic waste. So I'm torn. On one hand, $8 a day is $2,920 a year — real money for most people. On the other, if 10,000 people in one city did it, that's $29 million redirected away from plastic producers. But does that actually move the needle, or just make us feel better while corporations keep pumping out 400 million tons of plastic annually? I don't have a clean answer, and I'm curious where others land.