And speaking of fascinating reads, that same New Yorker also features Jonathan Frantzen’s The Way Of The Puffin (link is abstract only) as he traces the origins of a stuffed puffin golf-club cover back to the factory in China where it was made.

…southeast Asia: a region well on its way to being clear-cut and strip-mined into one vast muddy pit, since China itself is hopelessly short on natural resources to supply the factories that supply us. The Chinese people may bear the brunt of Chinese pollution, but the trauma to biodiversity is being re-exported around the world

Bonus feature, an audio interview with Frantzen himself.