Food for Thought: Moo-ve Aside, Animal Leather — Vegan Fashion is on the Rise

By Danbee You, Alliance Intern from Washington University, St. Louis ‘28

You’ve heard of a vegan diet or vegan cosmetics, but what about a vegan wardrobe?

Vegan fashion is clothing and accessories that don’t contain animal or animal-derived substances. Even if you aren’t slaughtering sheep for sweaters, wool plucking counts as a non-vegan practice.

You may associate animal-based fashion with snake leather or real fur, but not all non-vegan clothes look like a fox tail draped around a rich lady’s neck or a certain dalmatian-obsessed fashion designer.

While you might not be wearing the leather of an exotic tropical reptile, your cashmere sweater, leather wallet, and silk blouse are unfortunately not vegan. This isn’t to discourage you — animal-based products creep into our lifestyle every day — but to shed light on how you can use your purchasing power to make environmentally-conscious decisions.

Animal agriculture is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, and biodiversity loss, but its role in fashion is often overlooked. The animal fashion industry leaves behind a trail of carbon, water, and “blood” footprints that have detrimental impacts on the environment.

The Carbon Footprint

A single pair of cow-skin leather boots uses the same amount of carbon emissions as charging your phone for 23 years, or about 8,500 times. A leather jacket emits well over twice that amount of carbon. In comparison to synthetic leather, cow skin leather is 7 times more climate-impactful.

Wool has a similarly enormous carbon footprint. While sheep wool made up 1% of the global fiber market in 2022, it accounted for a whopping 98% of annual carbon emissions from the animal fiber industry. Compared to a cotton sweater, a wool knit sweater releases 27 times more carbon footprint equivalent.

The Water Footprint

The fashion industry uses about 25 trillion gallons of water a year, with animal-based materials like leather and wool using the most amount of resources.

A single leather tote bag takes around 4,500 gallons of water, roughly equal to 500 showers. In contrast, a conventional cotton tee uses about 1,400 gallons per kg of material.

What really took me aback was the water footprint of wool. It takes about 45,000 gallons of water just to produce 1 kg of clean wool, around 2,000 showers worth of water.

The Blood Footprint

Using animal leather and wool is rarely a harmless, cruelty-free process. FOUR PAWS, a global animal welfare organization, concluded that only about 3% of the world’s supply of wool and 4% of the world’s feathers and down (a feather-like fluff) are certified to their animal welfare standard. That means that nearly all animals used for fashion have been inhumanely treated.

Like me, you might have assumed that the skin is a byproduct of the meat industry, meaning it is made from the scraps of animals who are already being killed. However, it is not just a byproduct, but a co-product of the industry.

Leather is just as profitable, if not more, as meat and dairy products. The same goes for down and feathers in the poultry business. Animal welfare organization Animals Australia says, “Their skin can still represent a significant portion of the income made on the sale of their body parts.” This suggests that when profit is at stake, animals will be killed solely for their hide and feathers.

Moreover, live-plucking is an ongoing practice in which birds have their under feathers painfully plucked while alive, stripping them of their climate-protective coat. A 2022 investigation by FOUR PAWS found that about half of the farms they visited in Poland were still using live-plucking.

In some cases, cows, sheep, and pigs are either skinned alive or inadequately anesthetized, resulting in unspeakable pain. Even silk production involves animal suffering. Silk moths are boiled alive to maintain the structural integrity of the silk thread.

According to FOUR PAWS, the down and feathers industry claims 3.4 billion ducks and geese, the leather industry claims over 700 million animals, and the wool industry claims over 650 million animals a year. Even the dying (pun intended) fur industry and exotic leather industry respectively slaughter 100 million and 3 million animals.

Moreover, the human workers in slaughterhouses have high levels of repetitive motion injuries and face perpetration-induced stress disorder (PITS), which is caused by the guilt of being the perpetrator of suffering. While you may be able to block out the bloody scene that led to your pristine, white wool scarf, someone else is doing the messy work for you.

Rise of Sustainable Style

As more people become cognizant of the sustainable — or not so sustainable — practices behind their favorite items, they are shifting toward vegan products, including vegan fashion. A 2024 global survey by YouGov shows that about 27% of shoppers avoid animal-based fashion, and 70% of Americans agree that companies should invest in vegan alternatives.

Furthermore, a poll spanning 12 countries found that 81% of respondents were concerned about fur usage, followed by down feather (59%), and wool (33%). The mass condemnation of fur is likely due to the vivid, cruel imagery of killing a wild animal, but pushing against the cultural desensitization to livestock suffering, we should be aware of the same fate that cows, sheep, and other animals face.

In response to consumer criticism, the fashion industry is exploring ways to incorporate sustainable practices like regenerative farming and fiber recycling. However, only 4% of fashion brands reviewed by FOUR PAWS have published their reduction commitments for animal-derived materials. Luckily, other companies are stepping up with vegan alternatives.

Shopping for a Sustainable Style

In lieu of cow leather, what are eco-conscious consumers buying?

Many turn to synthetic leather PU (polyurethane) as an alternative to cow leather. Easy switch, right? Compared to the 66 kg of carbon equivalent emissions that go into making cow leather boots, synthetic leather boots require just 10 kg. And synthetic leather is cheaper and more accessible, so you can easily buy your leather with a guilt-free conscience.

Not so fast. Although synthetic or fake leather has always been the go-to replacement for animal leather, it still uses fossil fuels during production. Synthetic alternatives may also use non-renewable and non-biodegradable materials that contribute to plastic pollution when discarded, and microplastics can even seep into waterways when being washed.

Fortunately, environmentally concerned vegans have been seeking alternatives to PU leather and have come up with some surprising and creative ecological and ethical solutions.

A popular alternative is Piñatex, leather made from pineapple waste products. While cow leather requires about 1,850 gallons of water per meter, Piñatex uses less than a gallon of water per meter. Other alternatives include sustainably grown cotton, hemp, cellulosic materials like Tencel and bamboo lyocell, recycled materials, and even lab-grown wool.

But even plant-based leathers aren’t perfect. Piñatex and Mylo, mushroom root leather, may be made of renewable resources and ethical practices, but they both contain non-degradable synthetic components that pose an issue for disposal.

Cork leather is produced by peeling off bark from living trees, which then helps the trees sequester more carbon. However, there are challenges with cork because of the stripping of the bark, unless it’s sustainably harvested.