It’s Earth Week again, which means the media is back with their annual routine of telling us how to live. CNN Underscored just dropped a massive guide with over fifty products that are supposed to make the planet cleaner, but if you look at the price tags, they're mostly going to make your wallet a whole lot lighter.

Let’s keep it real: the prices on some of this stuff are absolutely wild. They are recommending Alpyn Beauty’s Barrier Repair Cream, which goes for anywhere from $23 all the way up to $62. Who in the community has sixty dollars to spend on a single jar of face cream? They say some of that money goes to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, which is nice and all, but most people are just trying to make sure they can pay their light bill this month.

Then they got Botnia’s Balancing Oil Cleanser on the list for $58. Fifty-eight dollars for face wash! If you walk into any neighborhood beauty supply or corner store, you can get a regular cleanser that works just fine for a fraction of that. But because this one has "compostable packaging" and "clean ingredients," they expect you to pay a premium. It’s a classic hustle, repackaging basic everyday items as luxury "sustainable" goods so they can charge rich-neighborhood prices.

Even the basic stuff is marked up. They’re pushing Ethique's Solid Shampoo bars for $17. Seventeen dollars for a bar of soap! That’s crazy. They’re also pushing Hey Humans Natural Deodorant in Rosewater Ginger and a $10 Function of Beauty shampoo. While ten bucks for shampoo isn't the worst, when you add up all these "eco-friendly" swaps, you're looking at a serious dent in your paycheck just to wash your hair and put on deodorant.

The guide also features a Patagonia Nano Puff Hoodie and a Tushy Classic 3.0 Bidet. Let’s be honest: most folks in the hood have been practicing sustainability for years without even trying—we reuse plastic grocery bags for trash liners, keep plastic takeout containers for leftovers, and turn old t-shirts into cleaning rags. We do it to save money, not for a trend. But when big corporations get involved, they turn saving the planet into a luxury club that regular people can't afford to join.

CNN even admits that a lot of these eco-friendly products are "greenwashed" garbage that isn't worth the cash. But then they turn around and give you a shopping list of high-priced items anyway. It feels like a guilt trip. They want you to feel bad about using normal plastic bottles, but then they make the "good" stuff so expensive that you're forced to keep buying the cheap plastic anyway.

If these big companies actually cared about cleaning up the planet, they would make these sustainable products affordable for everybody, not just the people shopping at Sephora. Until they drop these prices down to earth, most of us are going to keep buying what we can afford, and there’s no shame in that. Saving the planet shouldn't require a high credit score.

Sources: Federal Trade Commission. (2012). Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims ("Green Guides")*. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2023). Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Fact Sheet*. National Eczema Association. (2023). NEA Seal of Acceptance Product List*. National Park Service. (2023). Grand Teton National Park Natural Resource Reports*.