Did you know that to make a wedding a few grams of gold on average it takes 2 tons of rock excavated to a depth of several kilometers and 5 tons of water? And
third of the products sold in our supermarkets contains palm oil in the manufacture of the forests are destroyed?
Did you know that is the production of cotton to have caused the disappearance of the Aral Sea, once the 4th largest lake in the world?
Here are just some of the information that you can discover by reading "Confessions of an eco-sinner" by Fred Pearce, (Edizioni Ambiente Euro 22.00).
Despite the title the book is not only interesting but presents a wide-ranging and well-documented strictly, the origin and destiny of all the products of common and daily use of which we can not (it seems) do less to live.
Pearce is a British journalist who works as an environmental consultant for the New Scientist. It took several years to visit many different places on our planet in order to know where they come from, who made them and at what cost to the environment, the products we use every day.
The survey of the gold mines of South Africa, to continue in the rainforests of Indonesia, Australia, Uzbekistan addressing all the issues that concern our daily consumption: food, clothing, computing, energy consumption, waste.
In these pages we find for example that the banana, one of the most eaten fruit in the world, being a mutant sterile and free from seeds and cultivated worldwide in a single variety in America, Asia and Africa, (the "Cavendish"), is seriously threatened by insects and diseases that may cause extinction.
Do not believe us? E 'already happened in the '50s when the banana varieties that were not power but the current one called "Gros Michel", according to experts richer and sweeter than today. It is unfortunately vulnerable to a fungus that caused definitive disappearance.
And again, the process of production of aluminum is one of the most expensive in energy terms and in terms of emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
in the world are produced around 250 billion cans per year! Pearce, (which quotes several times in the book studies the Friends of the Earth) along the entire journey to discover the stages of production of a can from the region of Queensland (Australia) where one of the largest mining companies in the world, the Rio Tinto, extracts bauxite, which is then transported to Gladstone where it is refined to alumina. The production of aluminum has boundless ecological footprint. I quote a single fact: the production of a single tin results in the emission of 260 grams of CO2 or a quantity of gas sufficient to fill 300 cans!
The last part of the book is devoted to possible alternatives, namely the possibility that the second man Pearce has yet to save the planet and himself, as long as you decide to change course immediately. So we learn the importance of recycling: the recovery of aluminum from the return to the market which may result in energy savings of up to 3 / 4 of the cost of virgin aluminum production, the example of Tanzania where there is a trade fertile based on the recovery of used Western clothing, to arrive in Nairobi where the "Computers for Schools Kenya" recycles old computers from Europe and North America giving us then to schools across the country. Pearce finally gives us a framework of good examples to imitate, and already adopted by several cities in the world: the development of so-called "urban agriculture" in Valencia, the cooling system of buildings built in Toronto using the waters of Lake Ontario, the truck San Diego's trash fed with methane produced in landfills, and much more.
If the part dedicated to the research documented ineccepibibile is, of course not all the British journalist's personal views can be shared: as rightly pointed out in the preface to the book meteorologist Luca Mercalli, makes little sense to support the purchase of beans produced in Kenya and exported to the major European countries in the name of fair trade, much better choose to buy local seasonal produce. But apart from any conclusions, perhaps a bit 'rushed the book is really interesting and useful for those who want a complete picture of production processes and their impacts on the planet. I think it could be easily adopted by teachers in schools and in particular I find it useful to that process of acquisition of awareness and sense of responsibility that we set as its primary goal. In
fun latest film W. Allen the main character, (among other things supports the extension of capital punishment in all dog owners who do not collect the excrement of their pets!), argues that the human species is now composed only of individuals losers, selfish and cowardly, and therefore it is hopelessly doomed to extinction. Maybe by reading this uplifting as we try to give a glimmer of hope in the younger generation more ...
Michele Salvadori
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