Confessions Of An Eco Sinner: Travels to find where my stuff comes from [Paperback]

This is a splendid book...Fred Pearce...is one of the few that understand the Earth...we must listen to him.

Sometimes frightening, always enlightening, it will teach you more about other people's lives than you ever thought possible.

Beguiling...honest and revealing...optimistic...A big book for big problems.

Follow in his global footprints as you read this compelling, thoughtful, provocative and utterly fascinating book.

Acclaimed veteran science writer travels from the market down his street to the ends of the earth in search of the true story behind all his stuff and what his 'footprint' really means.

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. 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. This compelling story of Fred's travels challenges a range of green assumptions, moving green thinking on to a new, more sophisticated plane.

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.

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.