Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff - Rilegato

Pearce, Fred

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 080708588X ISBN 13: 9780807085882

Casa editrice: Beacon Pr, 2008

Riassunto

A global journey to find the sources of all the stuff in one man’s life—and its social and environmental footprint

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 everything in his own life; as an ordinary citizen of the Western world, he, like all of us, is an “eco-sinner.” In conversational and convivial prose, Pearce surveys his home and then starts out on a global tour to track down, among other things, the Kenyans who grow and harvest his fair trade coffee (which isn’t as fair as one might hope), the women in the Bangladeshi sweat shops who sew his jeans, and the Chinese factory cities where the world’s computers are made. It’s a fascinating portrait, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world’s more than 6 billion inhabitants—all eating, consuming, making—have on our planet, and of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.

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Recensione

In tracing the lineage of his 'stuff,' Fred Pearce's graceful and engaging book illuminates the invisible ways in which our ordinary possessions connect us to workers we will never know and forests we will never explore. Starting at the intersection of environmental threats, excessive consumption and exploited workers, Confessions points us toward a far more nurturing, meaningful and humane future.—Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat Is On and Boiling Point

"Required reading for anyone who's ever worn a t-shirt, used a cell phone or computer, sipped a cup of coffee, or taken out the garbage. Pearce travels beyond the carbon footprint of our consumer society to explore the forgotten social footprint, bringing us to the unlikely and sometimes unseemly places where our stuff is born, and where it goes to die."—William Alexander, author of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

"More and better stuff-the promise of our age. But where does it come from and what does it cost, ecologically and in human suffering? Fred Pearce decided to find out and the story is compelling but not pretty. With any luck, this brilliant book will change our insatiable demand for more material goods and guide us, and our planet, to spiritual and eco health."—Maude Barlow, author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water

"Tracking the routes taken by the items in his home-his coffee, cell phone, computer, green beans, chocolate, socks-from raw ingredient to finished product, the author presents fascinating firsthand investigations, as when he visits a group of fair-trade coffee farmers, follows the trail of his donated shirts to markets in Africa, visits Uzbek communities whose health, infrastructure and environment have been devastated by the cotton industry, and interviews female sweatshop workers who view their factory jobs as empowering."—Publishers Weekly

L'autore

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.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Beacon Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• ISBN 10: 080708588X
• ISBN 13: 9780807085882
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 276