Lillian

You should just do it. It takes five minutes. You just go in there, vote, and get out. No time, no effort.

You know, that's a good question. It's a perfect symbol for our overuse and dependence on single-use plastics, right? So what am I supposed to do?

I think that really started with the straw video, the plastic straw getting stuck up the sea turtle's nose. It has over 35 million views on YouTube.

I can't guarantee that. You know, people might not connect with seeing a person, a full-grown adult, with a straw up their nose the same way they connect with a sea turtle.

I wouldn't go further.

We actually go out and do some random inspections and we talk to business owners about the new rules and how to come into compliance with them.

So once we enter a business, usually we kind of take a look around, right? We want to see if we can see any straws.

Yeah, I mean, we're looking at the straws. What races are more likely to use straws? Definitely not the people.

Okay, that's excellent. So these are absolutely in compliance.

It looks like these are plastic, right? So you are currently out of compliance. That's right. You're busted.

I'm sorry. So what I'm going to do today is I'm just going to give you a warning letter. OK.

Yeah, that was absolutely useless in getting people to come into compliance.

Yeah, it takes a lot of time and energy and those one-on-one conversations to really enact real change.

Hi, my name is Lillian. I'm 26 years old. I live in Nashville, Tennessee. I currently pay off my credit card every month at the end of the month. But it has been a major problem with me saving money. Just not being able to save those extra $2,000 a month because it's all going towards the credit card. So, yeah, just trying to keep more in touch with what I'm spending every month.

But it's hard to do when all of your spending, including your groceries, your gas, your day-to-day expenses, go on the credit card.