Who Can Actually Afford to Go Green?

Sustainability isn’t just about water bottles and bamboo toothbrushes. This week, we’re talking about what it really costs to live sustainably, who’s being left behind, and why the green movement isn’t as inclusive as we like to think.

Transcript

[Intro]

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever it is, wherever you you happen to find yourselves today, I’m Dave, and thank you so much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off.

This week, we are going to talk about sustainability. Not the curated kind or the influencer version. But the very real, the complicated kind that actually affects how we, as people, live our lives.

So, we’re digging into what some of the actual costs are to “go green,” who gets to make those choices, and who doesn’t. And spoiler alert: it’s not just about reusable water bottles and rooftop solar panels. Sometimes, it’s about dignity. Sometimes, it looks like  survival. And sometimes, it’s about not about having to make that choice between the planet and your paycheck.

[Opening]

So starting off today, what does it actually mean to “live sustainably”?

If you spend enough time on social media, it’s really easy to walk away with that understanding that it’s about swapping out plastic wrap for something like beeswax, buying oat milk in glass bottles, and driving around that $70,000 electric car.

But what if your rent, or property taxes just went up again?

What if your job doesn’t offer health insurance, or that insurance, just became way, way too expensive to afford?

What if you’re living just far enough away form civilization that the only grocery store nearby is a local gas station, as is my brother’s case in Arizona right now.

Realistically, sustainability looks different for every single one of us, it varies pretty significantly depending on our situations. And sometimes, that situation can be something like, you’re just trying to pay your bills and survive. 

[Segment 1: The Image vs. The Reality]

Let’s be honest though, “sustainability” honestly it kinda has a branding problem.

If we only go by what we see online, it looks like a lifestyle aesthetic. It looks like glass jars, electric refill stations, bamboo toothbrushes, and someone using half a lemon as deodorant.

Now, I’m not knocking any of that. If that’s your thing, awesome. But that’s not exactly the full picture.

The reality is, sustainable living often comes with a price tag, and sometimes that’s a pretty huge price tag. Things like organic produce, non-toxic cleaners, ethically sourced clothes—it all adds up. And not everyone has the luxury of choosing what’s “eco-friendly” when they’re stuck choosing what’s affordable.

We love to say “vote with your dollars,” but what about the people who just don’t have many votes?

[Segment 2: Who Gets Left Out]

So, let’s talk about those who gets left behind in this green movement.

And, it’s easy to say things like “just buy less,” “ditch fast fashion,” “drive electric,” or “eat local”, but all of that assumes you have money, time, and access to these things.

If you live in a rural area, maybe the nearest farmers market is 40 minutes away. If you’re in a dense city, you might not have a car at all. If you’re a single parent working two jobs, shopping zero-waste, it’s probably isn’t making your to-do list.

And then there are the bigger systems: cities that haven’t invested in public transit, neighborhoods that were redlined and now sit next to freeways, communities where utilities are unreliable and clean water isn’t always a given.

I’m in Jakarta right now on business, and currently I’m looking out at a city of over 10 million people and, if you include the surrounding areas in the valley, it equals about 33 million,. And most of these people? They’re not exactly deciding between compostable and recyclable packaging. They’re just financially trying to make it to the next week.

Power here still comes mostly from coal. Garbage often gets burned because the infrastructure here, there’s simply not the money, there’s not the tax revenue handle it any other way. So, it’s not about people being carelessness, it’s about capacity, it’s all about ability.

And it’s kind of a good reality check. Because if we tend to think sustainability is just about individual choices. While we’re doing that though, we’re ignoring the billions of people, and that’s billions, with a “b”, who just don’t have those choices in the first place. Those choices aren’t theirs because, they’re not options.

[Segment 3: Dignity and Trade-Offs]

Here’s something I keep thinking about though: some have made sustainability feel, kind of like a morality test. Like if you’re not doing everything, if you’re not doing your part, you’re failing.

But, how about, if you’re doing the best you can with what you’ve got?

Honestly, I think that there’s a kind of dignity with that, especially if it includes things like repairing things instead of throwing them out, cooking from scratch because takeout is way too expensive, taking the bus or train even though it’s unreliable, simply because it’s all you’ve got.=====

And doing this like this, that’s not failure. That’s resourcefulness, it’s doing what you gotta do just to get by. But the sustainability movement? It doesn’t always see it that way.

Instead, people get shamed for not composting, and yes, I’ve seen this. or not using stainless steel straws, as if that’s the real issue in all of this. I’ve also been exposed to, and I’ll just call them environmental Karen’s and Kevin’s, and honestly, that kind of talk, that kind of pressure, not exactly helpful. 

(And sorry if your name is Karen or Kevin. If it helps, I’m short, white and bald, and you would not believe the number of times that I’ve been identified as a white supremest, just from a casual glance? It’s kinda crazy. So Karen, Kevin? Sorry about that, but that’s what we call them.

Anyways, that kinda of shame though that we’re talking about, it can feel really heavy. Especially when you're already carrying a lot and you’re just trying to get by.

[Segment 4: Redefining Sustainability]

So what if we widen the lens a bit and kind of lighten up the mood and have a little fun with it? 

For those of us who are lucky enough to think about living sustainably, not just surviving, let’s talk about some menu options.

First up:

Butter. Not from cows, not from plants, but from thin air.
 A company called Savor—and this is funded by Bill Gates, of course—is building chemically identical butter from CO₂, methane, and hydrogen.

This process, it could cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 92% compared to dairy butter, uses 95% less land, and 78% less water.

Here are some of Bill Gate’s own words on the topic. 

“The process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does. And most important, it tastes really good – like the real thing, because chemically it is.”

This product, it’s not yet available in stores, it’s still very much still in the “coming soon to a store near you” phase. But how to market this stuff, how to brand it? Because—can we even call it butter? It’s not from cows. It’s not from plants. It’s churned from thin air.

So maybe, give it a name that fits and a few tag-lines to go with them, and I’m just having fun here.

How about CO₂ Spread—because nothing says flavor like captured emissions.

Here’s another one: Skymelt™—molecular luxury, straight from the stratosphere.

Or maybe Nebulard™—crafted from clouds and pure investor confidence.

Man, sometimes I crack myself up a little bit too much, I’m just hoping that you’re having at least a little bit of fun with this as well. Here’s one last one though. 

Gates of Lard: a buttery portal to a better-funded future.

Ya, again, I’m just having fun with all of this but, whatever you call it, this stuff is real. It’s coming. And it’s definitely going to be more sustainable than the bagel or toast that we put it on.

How about a few more? 

There’s also cricket protein.
 A single pound of cricket flour takes about a gallon of water to produce. Compare that to beef, which takes around 1,800 gallons per pound.

Currently, cricket flour is available just about everywhere. In fact, there’s an entire industry around Cricket Protein Bars. Haven’t had one yet, don’t plan to any time soon either. Honestly though, I’m not totally against it, I’d definitely give one a try, but I don’t eat a lot of protein bars, so, I’m free.

Moving on, 

Want to be sustainable? Eat a bug.

And this time, not just in powder form. Chef Joseph Yoon at Brooklyn Bugs will craft you a plate of Sweet and Sour Cicada, or Mushroom and Cricket Scallops. He’ll even serve you up a nice, savory bowl of Cricket Kimchi.

And, if you’re thinking, “Wow, that sounds mighty delicious, I’d like to make some myself?” Go ahead and Google Brooklyn Bugs, there’s plenty there. 

Still hungry? How about egg whites made from fungus? And yes, you heard that right.

Onego Bio, and I think I’m pronouncing that right, which is a biotech firm in San Diego, is using fermentation to produce the exact same protein found in egg whites—without a single chicken.

They have about a 130,000-square-foot facility, and it’s expected to match the annual output, get ready for it, of six million hens, while using far less land, water, and definitely less energy.

Like the Bill Gates butter, it’s not yet available in stores. But they don’t plan on selling directly to consumers anyways. By 2026 though, you could be eating lab-grown egg whites, made from fungus, in things like cookies that you buy, your protein bars, your mayonnaise, and you might not even know it.

So yeah, sustainability might not just be futuristic. It might be kinda stealthy, if you will.

Again, getting back to something a little more serious, here’s the thing: all of this stuff is fascinating, it’s fun to think about. And it’s progress. But it’s also a reminder that the future of food is being built for the people who can afford to think about the future.

For everyone else, the question isn’t “would you eat it or not?” It’s more: can you afford anything at all?

What if sustainability wasn’t just about individual purchases, but about care? About how we treat people, how we build communities, about how we create systems that don’t waste human potential?

Wasting human potential, that might sound a little nebulous, what that looks like, is someone who wants to work, but can’t afford the bus to get there.

It looks like a teenager dropping out of school to carry water in Africa, or a single mom spending hours waiting in line for fuel in places like Malawi, because there’s simply no stable infrastructure.

These aren’t isolated anecdotes. They’re real life examples of systems breaking down, and people paying the price. For a single mother, that line isn't a minor inconvenience, it’s time stolen, energy expended, on top of the kids that she’s responsible for raising. It’s  potential that wasted.

So when we talk about “wasting human potential,” it's not abstract. It's literal. People who could be at school, who could be at work, or caring for family end up stuck in lines, for fuel, for food, for water, sometimes just to stay alive. It’s people spending so much time and energy surviving that there’s nothing left to build a better life, let alone a better planet. 

Imagine that you’re just hanging on by a thread, and someone comes up to you and says that you’re not doing it right, and this can come from any number of ways, think advertising and media. But you’re just hanging on, and you’re still being told that you’re doing it wrong? 

That’s a whole other conversation, but these types of situations create a different kind of waste. And we don’t talk about it nearly enough when we talk about sustainability.

What if we recognized that that walk to work, growing your own food, fixing old clothes, carpooling, all those things are sustainable.  Even if they don’t come with a “Made from Recycled Materials” label.

And what if instead of asking individuals to carry all the weight, we started asking more from the companies and systems that built the mess in the first place?

[Closing]

Living sustainably it’s not always about the choices we make at the checkout line or the cars we drive. Sometimes it’s about the choices we don’t get to make. And that’s honestly the case for a lot of people in this world, and I’m looking down at a lot of them now in Jakarta.

Maybe this is exactly the conversation that we need to be having right now, what we need to talk about a lotmore. Not just how to be sustainable, but how to make it possible for everyone to live that way. I mean, cricket flour, for example, it’s like 20 times more expensive than wheat flour. Who can realistically afford that outside of the developed world? Many of these options are very much a first-world choices. 

They’re designed for people who already have margin in their lives. And that’s fine. Innovation has its place. But if we want real change, it can’t stop there.

Because the truth is, sustainability doesn’t have to be sleek. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be branded, or pretty.

It can look like a neighbor sharing tools.; like someone fixing what’s broken instead of replacing it; like a community fixing or building something together, instead of waiting for some company, or some billionaire, to come save them. We all have neighbors, right? Let’s get to work.

So maybe we stop measuring sustainability by what’s in someone’s shopping cart. And start asking what their day to day life looks like. Because if sustainability only works for the people who can afford it—then it’s not really a solution.

It’s just another version of the problem.

And with that, I think I’m gonna call this one a wrap.

What is up next?

We’re talking water—but not the kind you drink, the kind that destroys.

Floods, droughts, and what happens when water doesn’t just disappear… it shows up in all the wrong places.

When water becomes a threat—not a resource—and the people hit hardest are the ones already hanging on by a thread that we talked about. You probably know exactly where I’m going with this but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having a discussion about. 

Again, I’m Dave and thank you so much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off, I hope you have an amazing week.