Independent on Sunday, The: Books: Wanna save the planet? Don't wash anything except tampons

A Life Stripped Bare

By Leo Hickman

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The woman in my local Sainsbury's had made her mind up at any rate. 'No difference! No difference!' she almost spat, steering her husband past the organic fruit and veg display towards the non- organic produce. I'm not surprised she sounded furious. Can it really be true that agribusiness has been playing a chemical version of Russian roulette with our health, spraying (for example) Cox's apples up to 16 times with 36 different pesticides, to unknown, untested combined effect? That would be a scandal, right? And one that we have ignorantly, lazily permitted to happen. No, far better to get angry with those pesky, holier-than-thou activists who persist in pointing out the unappetising truth.

But there's more to green living than whacking a Fairtrade avocado in the basket and hoping for the best. Buy a soft-drink and you could be undermining workers' rights. Buy a T-shirt and you could be condoning child labour. Buy a painkiller and you could be helping to support the US Republican party. A Life Stripped Bare is the story of one man's attempt to lead a truly ethical lifestyle while bringing up a small child in London " without turning into a festering, deodorant-crystal-rubbing freak.

What's the good of buying organic if your apples have been air- freighted from New Zealand? Which is better, Fairtrade or organic? Should you even be shopping at the supermarket at all? To answer these questions for a world reeling with choices, Hickman invited three green auditors to his south London home: a journalist from Ethical Consumer, the right-on Hannah; laid-back Mike from Friends of the Earth, and chic wonderwoman Rene, who founded Planet Organic. For anyone who thinks buying the odd box of Ecover earns them a big green tick, their analysis makes devastating reading. The Hickmans' store cupboard is too full; they shouldn't watch so much TV; like everybody else, they generate too much waste. The paints used to decorate are poisonous, as are their cleaning products and baby toiletries ('the last place you want chemicals and poisons is on that cute little bottom'), their long-haul holidays are unethical and their eating habits suck. Moving outside, the experts don't like the decking.

Hickman, who first wrote about his green adventures in a column in The Guardian, is New Man incarnate. His subtitle is 'Tiptoeing through the ethical minefield', but most of the time he seems to be tiptoeing round his wife. She thinks the experts are unrealistic spoilsports, and seems determined to put the brakes on the experiment wherever possible. This constant friction probably worked rather well in the context of a regular column; in a book it just makes them look mystifyingly ill-suited, although the long- suffering Jane does get some great lines. 'Why don't you start using washable tampons?' he asks. 'Sure. If you're prepared to wash them,' she fires back.

There are some notable successes: terry nappies for baby Esme, Dr Hauschka skincare, the organic vegetable box scheme, the eco-hiking holiday in Umbria " reached by train, not plane. But there are also some dismal disasters, like trying to clean the loo with lemon juice, or deal with kitchen waste by installing a wormery, which just leads to an infestation of fruit flies. No cabbage leaf is left unturned in the quest, and Leo is an engaging and indefatigable guide, going off to visit an organic farm run by the Kindersley publishing family, or hitching a lift on a dustcart to see where the rubbish goes.

Dotted through the book are excerpts from the many emails his experiment prompted from eco-warriors all over the globe. The feedback ranges from the charming " the person who sees TV ads as 'essentially providing a free service in what to avoid'; to the unappealing " the woman who saves water by just washing 'the stinky bits " pits, crotch, feet'; and the objectionable ('Having children is the most unethical thing you can ever do, so try ceasing that for starters').

There are correspondents who eat out of bins and knit their own dishcloths. One lofty emailer castigates Hickman for living in a corrupt Western society at all. 'The society you live in is not ethical. Stop worrying about what you eat and start worrying about all the people in the world who do not have the advantages of your wealth and education,' lectures Kaj, seeming oblivious that his alternative " living on a Caribbean island, teaching scuba-diving " is not just predicated on Western tourism, but parasitic of it.

For most of the time the book transcends its origin, though the overwrought drama of the baby's sudden illness ('Esme's temperature is really high and she's gone all floppy and is starting to fit. I'm really scared, Leo') probably read better as a column; particularly as he bathetically concludes that where baby's concerned, he doesn't care what Pfizer and Glaxo get up to in the world.

The odd po-faced moment aside, Hickman demonstrates on nearly every page that you don't have to be a 'high-minded, preaching so and so' to change the world. His book is an eminently sensible " and heartwarming " manifesto for change.