Affluvia

What are the ecological costs of innocuous-seeming daily routines? This book addresses that question by exploring the (usually) unexamined aspects of the ten minutes in which I make coffee and feed my cats every morning. Everything involved is quite mundane-coffee beans and a grinder, cat food from cans put into glass bowls, water to rinse the serving spoon. The activity is not particularly extravagant, but is simply an ordinary part of contemporary lifestyle in first world culture.

And then-I expose what underpins this everyday life. The examination of the lifecycle of production and consumption reveals the ways these familiar objects are connected to complex networks of industrial production, extraction industries, human rights and labor issues, pollution of air and water, and destruction of human and animal habitat.

Each chapter focuses on one part of that routine, exploding the apparently simple activity into component parts. "Making Coffee" describes the lifecycle of beans from planting to roasting, the production of the coffee bag in which the beans are packaged and sold, the manufacture of the coffee grinder and coffee maker, the filter, half and half, and even the coffee cup. "Feeding the Cats" traces the cat food, the can and label, spoon, and bowls. Even the water, electricity, and waste products come under examination.

The book is a vivid, dramatic, account of the environmental and social impact of ordinary everyday activities and is aimed at a broad general readership.