Leather & Ethics
It’s an ongoing question for those of us who are makers - and therefore also consumers, we rely on manufacturers to source the goods to create our work. I’d suggest that if you lead a vegan lifestyle, or possibly even a vegetarian one, you already know your personal answer to whether or not leatherwork is ethical. But, if you’re interested in more information regarding the social, animal and ecological impact of leather, read on!
Please always feel free to contact us with ideas about how we can expand our ethical practices
scroll down for our thoughts # 1-5 >>
Byproduct or Not Byproduct?
If you eat meat, it’s natural that you might feel morally calm about wearing leather as well, especially if the leather is a byproduct of the meat and food industry. But, is leather always a byproduct? The simple answer is no, but the real answer is much more complex. According to our research, most vegetable tanned cow hides in the US (the primary leather we use for armor, corsetry etc - see link “What Leather Should I Choose”) are directly a result of the meat industry. The hide/leather accounts for roughly 20% of the economic value of the animal, while meat accounts for the rest.
Other kinds of hides, however, are also used to make leather. These include fish (definitely a byproduct - the fish gets eaten), rabbit (same), goat, sheep, ostrich, and reptile. To focus on the reptile part of the equation, the leather hide itself seems to be 100% of the economic value of that animal - in other words, the creature is killed for its leather, and for no other purpose. The creature may even be bred on a farm for its hide.
We are continuing to research manufacturers that create quality hides out of animals that die of natural or accidental causes. We would be very interested to learn any information about such companies if you know any! As far as we know right now, these manufacturers do exist on a very small scale, but cannot provide many of the materials we need. We are also interested in eventually learning to tan our own hides, so that we know exactly what happens, why, and how every step of the way.
2. Ecological Impact
We all know how hard it is to be a consumer these days. If the item we want to purchase is in our price range, has it relied on unethical human labor? Child labor? Heavy pollutant practices on the part of the manufacturer? How much does the CEO make as opposed to their workers? Being an ethical consumer - being able to sleep at night as a person who lives in our consumer-driven culture - is a hard thing for all of us right now, which is why we are trying to provide the best information we can for you.
The commercial tanning processes that create leather are absolutely a pollutant factor, and can effect air, water, and soil. Vegetable tan leather (the process of creating tooling leather, our personal favorite leather to use, via mostly natural tannins) tends to be a much lower pollutant than other kinds of tanning. Chrome tanning, for example, is known to affect water sources near the production site and is typically the highest pollutant of the basic leather types.
Unfortunately, the same can be said for our wardrobe staples like t-shirts and jeans. Dyeing and synthetic fabric manufacture (and the fashion/garment industry in general) are all heavy pollutants, even as practices evolve to minimize their ecological impact.
One thing that draws us to leather, especially vegetable tan leather which is a relatively natural process, is that it is a biodegradable material. We dislike working with pleather or vinyl, because these items may be vegan but they are also essentially plastic fabric that will still be in landfills long after we have worn out our use for them. Most leather will decompose over time, and some leather scraps can even be composted.
We use primarily vegetable tan leather. This type of tanning has a lower environmental cost, and it is also a kind of leather that starts out as a blank slate for tooling, dyeing and shaping.
3. Isn’t the meat industry bad for the planet?
Even if leather is a byproduct, which is complicated in itself, isn’t the meat industry bad for the planet regardless?
Yep, sure is.
Honestly, we don’t have a good answer to this one - we wish we did. We believe in lobbying to the extent of our ability for sustainable practices in the meat industry. Unfortunately, that industry is so large and so deeply entrenched that we doubt we will see meaningful change in the next few years. But, let’s keep hoping and working toward it. If the meat industry vanishes completely from the face of the earth, and cattle hides become impossible to find, we’re here for it and we support it.
4. What about fur?
We at WizardKits Artistry are generally more comfortable working with leather than fur. Since these both involve the skins of once-living creatures, why do we have this preference? Here are some things we think about :
While the leather we source commercially can often be a byproduct or co-product of an industry that is happening with or without us, dealing in luxury furs is almost never a byproduct. There are some exceptions - sheepskins, for example, and rabbit furs, often come from sources where the animal is used holistically. These can also be sourced from smaller farms where the life quality of the animal is higher than from corporate meat sources. Other creatures that are used for fur, such as mink or fox, are slaughtered for no other use than their fur. Historically, certain species have been driven to extinction or the edge of extinction for their fur or feathers. We use cattle leather for the most part, but how often do you see someone wearing a cow fur? (actually, if you’ve ever seen this, PLEASE send us pictures, we want to know!)
Additionally, we love our ferrets. We have a family of four ferrets at the time of this writing, and they are dearly adored. We have a gut instinct to stay away from anything that reminds us of their furry little loving selves, which especially includes mink fur and mink eyelashes.
5. Up-cycle & Recycle
We don’t have the wizardry yet to achieve a zero impact production process, but we CAN work hard every day to minimize our impact. Our workshop is deliberately home to more scrap bins than trash bins, and every month we spend a week selecting scrap pieces to use in our upcoming projects.
It may be a very simple trash-into-treasure idea, but we hope that even the small things matter. We also purchase or pay shipping to receive scraps from other artists that would otherwise be thrown away. We use leather scraps down to the last little shaving, and we do our utmost to also use our non-biodegradable scraps such as foam and resin.
We save and re-use the packaging materials from the shipments we receive, and use these primarily to package our shipments to you! When we order packing material for our work, we only order biodegradable and recyclable options.
We also re-use garment donations and thrift store finds. For example, many theatrical costume shops receive huge donations of old, real-fur coats/muffs/hats from a time when these were worn more commonly. We accept these, as well as second hand fabric and garments, and try to do a little magic with these items that might otherwise sit in the attic forever gathering dust.
Basically, we do what we can. And we are always looking for new ways to do more.
6. What about vegan leather alternatives?
Ahh, there’s the rub!
If the ethics of leather are questionable at best, why do we use it? Why don’t we work universally with vegan alternatives?
One reason is that there is no vegan substitute yet that can do all the things that tooling leather does. It just doesn’t exist yet.
Another reason is, like we said above, many commercially available vegan alternatives to leather are just plastic - to us, that’s not better, and the ecological impact is actually much more severe.
We are researching low-impact, biodegradable leather alternatives. There are many out there, made of materials such as mushroom, pineapple leaves, and a host of other things. There are two catches. 1) The actual manufacturing process of these materials isn’t really that much better than vegetable tan leather, in most meaningful ways. 2) Many of these alternatives are from start up companies, who sell limited supplies to established fashion brands - which means we can’t just go out and buy it. Maybe someday, but not today.
Our research indicates that leather hides (barring the part where they come from a living creature, which is a personal choice that we are willing to work with) are as if not more ecologically ethical than, for example, buying a synthetic satin at your local fabric store. Or ordering a t-shirt online. Synthetic fabrics make up a huge proportion of the world’s non-biodegradable waste, and pure natural fabrics such as silk, cotton and linen tend to be more expensive and harder to find. So, the whole question of ethics is wrapped up in the much larger industry and we are doing our best to be as conscious as we can in our small corner of it.
5. Overpopulation hides and invasive creatures
This one is probably the easiest for us.
Let’s use deer as an example. Deer, as any driver in upstate New York knows, run wild - often the victims of car accidents, natural deaths, and hunters. As far as our research indicates, if the wild deer population was not limited by these things, there would be too many of them for the food and resources available to them and they would start dying anyway. Predation is both important and natural.
We love deerskin leather. The chances are, that deer lived a normal and wild life, not a static and miserable life in a breeding facility. That deer also would be dying of something - it just would. That deer is probably not the result of a questionable and polluting global industry. That deer is our best friend, one of the simplest answers we have to tackle. Thank goodness for at least one easy one.