Confessions of an Eco Sinner

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ever wondered if declaring support for fair-trade and then chucking Kenyan beans from your shopping trolley to reduce food miles really added up? Or whether the women in Bangladeshi sweatshops really want you to stop buying the clothes from their sewing machines? Or how the system works when you dump stuff but never buy from a charity shop? While none of us should stop trying, it was never easy being green. Mindful of his footprint, Fred goes in search of the source of the cotton in his shirt, the prawns in his curry and the people who grew, mined or made all his stuff in an attempt to discover the true story behind our everyday things. This compelling story of his travels moves green thinking on to a new, more sophisticated plane.

Préface
This book offers the hidden story behind all our everyday things, revealing the cost of well-meaning but muddle-headed thinking.

Auteur

Fred Pearce is an author and journalist. He is married with grown-up children and lives in Wandsworth in London. For much of the time he works from home. But reporting about environment and development has taken him all over the world for publications such as New Scientist, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, Country Living, Geographical and the Ecologist.

Texte du rabat

Like many of us, Fred Pearce works hard from a city base, cares for his family and tries fitfully to do his bit for the planet too. But travelling across the world to track his personal 'footprint', he finds himself questioning an extraordinary number of accepted truths. Perhaps his well-intentioned efforts are not so good after all. Should Kenyan green beans go right back on his shopping list? Should he stop campaigning for a clean coastline and start shouting, 'Save wildlife, sh on the beach'? While he's at it, should he be cheering for Bangladeshi sweatshops too?

In search of the source of the cotton in his shirt, the prawns in his curry and the people who grew, mined or made all his stuff, Fred travels from rainforest to desert, up mountains and down mines, from oil field to shanty town to brothel. Yes, he finds squalor and despair. But also he finds good things in surprising places and huge opportunities just waiting to be seized. Challenging a series of green assumptions, this compelling story of Fred's travels moves green thinking on to a new, more sophisticated plane.