Fred Pearce, senior environmental correspondent for the “New Scientist”:http://www.newscientist.com/ is calculating his footprint. Unlike the increasingly popular “footprint calculators”: found online, Pearce is actually going around the globe and visiting the source of the “gold in his wedding band”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/03/freds-footprint-cost-of-gold.html, the “jeans he wears”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/04/freds-footprint-jeans-from-dhaka.html?DCMP=Matt_Sparkes&nsref=fred, and his “favorite coffee”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/03/freds-footprint-how-fair-is-fair-trade.html. In this amazing series, the audience discovers, along with Pearce, just how connected the world it is. What we do and buy right here instantly (and sometimes catastrophically) effects people in as far off places as Dhaka, Tanzania and the South Africa.
Also featured in the ongoing series “Fred’s Footprint”: “Fairtrade cotton”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/02/freds-footprint-cottoning-on-to.html, “prawns”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/04/freds-footprint-where-prawns-meet-mafia.html, recycled “mobile phones”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/02/freds-footprint-old-phones-offer-new.html and “computers”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/01/freds-footprint-dollar-day-for-wrecked.html and “green beans”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/01/freds-footprint-green-beans-and-old.html. Follow Fred’s Footprint as it’s revealed at the New Scientist “environmental blog”:http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/.