It was January 2023 when the state of Oregon proposed a law to ban kangaroo leather and the local press asked itself how Nike (which has its HQ in Oregon) would react. Meanwhile, back in February 2021, we wrote of how we hoped that Nike, along with other large sporting brands, wouldn’t fall into just the latest teary animal-rights campaign. Yet, not too long after these instances, we regret to report that (due to marketing reasons), such sportswear brands prefer to listen and give credit to vegan nonsense, rather than facts.
The (PR office’s) ethics of sportswear brands
And it was a one-two event. First came Puma, which announced to all that it was no longer going to use kangaroo leather, as it planned on substituting it with a synthetic and vegan material called “K-Better” (the usual modesty). Then it was Nike’s turn, which advertised the “green turn” of its Tiempo model for next year: “kangaroo-free”. “We have closed in 2021 the relationship with the only supplier of kangaroo leather we utilized”, said the brand to Reuters.
Vegan nonsense wins the round
Those that read La Conceria know it. The misleading vegan machine has moved against kangaroo leather, after having criminalized fur, after having tried to go after exotic leather and, in the long term, wishing to eliminate all animal products from the fashion and design segments. A misleading machine that, in short, starts with the moral condemnation of materials to impact the industrial aspect.
The radical green world is leveraging a description of the Australian kangaroo chain that states the latter is cruel and free of rules, in order to fuel the advertising campaign that would attempt to dissuade large brands from using the animal material. KIAA, the association that represents the Australian chain, tries in any way to explain that the description if simply false. It did so in the pages of this magazine.
And now it does it again on the Guardian: the collection of leather respects national and international laws, it’s sustainable from a social and environmental standpoint, and it completely excludes all kangaroo species that are at risk, only using the ones requiring to be kept at a controlled number to avoid overpopulation. Too bad not everybody listens.
In photo, Nike’s Tiempo from archive
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