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Where does everything in our daily lives come from?
The clothes on our backs, the computers on our desks, the cabinets in our kitchens, and the spices behind their doors? Under what conditions--environmental and social--are they harvested or manufactured?
In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce shows us the hidden worlds that sustain a Western lifestyle, and he does it by examining the sources of things in his own life. The opening page gives the conversational tone of the book:
"One scientist I met recently told me he reckoned that the average household in Europe or North America has so many devices and such a variety of food and clothing that to produce the same lifestyle in Roman times would have required six thousand slaves---cooks, maids, minstrels, ice-house keepers, woodcutters, nubile women with fans, and many more."
Pearce is a London journalist in his mid-fifties. He has a wife and two grown children. He wanted to explore his own footprint; to discover who grows, mines, and makes stuff; and where stuff goes after he had finished with it.
His own food cupboard started the curious questions. He found "nuts from Brazil and bottles of sparkling water from Scotland; sardines canned in Portugal and anchovies put in a jar in Spain; Italian chopped tomatoes and French mayonnaise; oatmeal from Lancashire and mustard from Dijon; coffee from Tanzania." The list went on and on to include items from India, Mauritius, Philippines, Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Jamaica, Malaysia, China, Grenada and Madagascar. Clearly Mr. Pearce was not an eat-local kind of guy!
He set out to travel the world to discover where the cotton in his shirt, the coffee in his mug, the prawns in his curry, the computer on his desk, and the phone in his hand were manufactured.
In so doing, he traveled more than 110,000 miles visiting more than twenty countries. It was a journey about people as much as about ecology. The first trip was "to find out about the gold in wedding ring---the one thing I never take off, the one thing that came with me every step of the way on my journey to find my global footprint.”"
The chapter headings give the reader clues to the findings. Including:
Coffee: Throwing a Hand Grenade into the Cozy World of Fair Trade White Gold: My T-shirt, Slave Labor, and the Death of the Aral Sea
My Beer Can: Giant Footprints in Bloke Heaven
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Beyond the Grave: A New Life for JoeBeyond the Grave: A New Life for Joe’s Phone
Trade Not Aid: Joining the Great Global Rummage Sale
Along the way the reader does meet men and women who manufacture, process and market the items Westerners consider "necessities."
We also see communities whose health, infrastructure and environment have been devastated. What is the price of our excessive consumption?
Pearce writes an interesting story of his stuff and takes the reader into uncomfortable places, but this reviewer is not sure he does enough.
For eco-sinners and readers wanting more information, consider these offerings:
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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan; and
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High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health by Elizabeth Grossman.
Fred Pearce is a former news editor at New Scientist. Currently that magazine's environment and development consultant, he has also written for Audubon, Popular Science, Time, the Boston Globe, and Natural History.
His books include With Speed and Violence, When the Rivers Run Dry, Keepers of the Spring, Turning Up the Heat, and Deep Jungle. He lives in England.
Barbara Theroux is the manager of Fact & Fiction, now part of the Bookstore at the University of Montana.
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