"Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff" by Fred Pearce

I got this book from the library on a whim. It's one of those books you can't stop reading and yet, kinda wish you'd never picked up. In it Fred Pearce picks different things around his house, like green beans, computers and clothes and tracks where it came from and where it goes when he's done with it.

This book goes along with what I've been feeling recently, as well as the article that I posted previously.

It's a fascinating book and really made me think about how I do actually have an effect on the global economy. That what I do, effects lives of individuals that, while I may never see them, are just as important and have needs, wants and desires, just like me. In an economics class, D's teacher told him that each dollar he spends is a vote. While I thought that was a cool concept before, I understand it better now.

Fred follows the gold in his wedding band down miles below the earth's surface to the dangerous mines of South Africa. He follows his produce back to Kenya where farming is encouraging young people to stay on the land and use eco-friendly growing means. He follows his clothes from sweatshops in Bangladesh to the cotton fields that are destroying Uzbekistan and the Aral Sea. He follows his furniture back through China to where it was probably logged illegally and unethically in New Guinea. He follows the computer he donates to an organization that fixes using disabled workers and donates them to schools across Kenya. he follows his recycling to China, where it is used to make new containers that are shipped back to where the recyclables came from originally.

The point (and the problem) with this book, is that it makes me realize that I can't follow all my goods back and know that they're grown, created, or traded fairly. It also made me realize, that as much as I might want to, there is no way that I can truely become completely self-sufficent. It's also made me much more aware of the waste products I'm producing and conscious of how much I'm recycling and how.

It's given me a much stronger desire to want to be as self-sufficent as possible. To know the people who are producing my food. To compost more, to waste less and hopefully to make a more possitive influence on the world around me, rather than an unconscious, thoughless negative impact. To realize that each dollar I spend is a vote. I can either help or I can hurt with it. But I'd better know which I'm doing.

But also remember a couple quotes from the book. "As Ghandi put it: ' There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.'" And, "... We should not make the perfect the enemy of the good."