The TH Interview: Fred Pearce--Confessions of An Eco-Sinner (Part Two)

FP: It heads for Africa. I followed it. I tracked down these trails. There is a thriving market from North America and also from Europe, container-loads of used clothing from us. The stuff that we hand over or we put in the bin for resale. It ends up on the dock sides of Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, or West Africa.

It's unloaded and sells in very large quantities to local people who are able to get bright, colorful clothing at very cheap prices. They're very grateful for that clothing. I followed the route to Tanzania, and I found that something like three-quarters of the people in that country now buy and routinely wear clothing which is second-hand from the West. They love it. They're not complaining about it.

There are people who complain because it has done damage to the local textile industries there. There are a lot of people who think that this trade should be banned in order to encourage a revival of clothes manufacture in parts of Africa. But I have to say that many of the people there told me that actually the factories there were no good. The clothes they produce were not what people wanted. There was a great consumer desire to buy our second-hand clothing. It's a bit difficult to tell people you can't buy them if they want to.

TH: You don't just track down the source of products but you look at electricity and fuel. What do you find? And were you looking at the electricity and fuel that you yourself use, or the inputs that were used to produce the goods that you buy when you go to the store?

FP: I was looking at both. I was interested in exactly where the electricity that I use in my home came from. A lot of it still comes from coal in Europe, as it does in North America, and some more from nuclear power and so on. I was working that out. It's not a big surprise where our electricity comes from, we all know it. But it's worth knowing because it's part of, if you like, our footprint on the planet that we all have.

The more power that we use, probably, the greater our footprint is. We don't really have much control over where our electricity comes from. It comes from however the power company chooses to manufacture it. But we need to know about these things and perhaps start campaigning for low carbon emission electricity to be delivered to us more often.

I think probably we're going to see some big changes in the next few years in the way that our electricity is generated. If we, as consumers and as part of the electorate, start demanding greener electricity, I think there's great potential now to get it.