Tell Coachtopia That Leather Is NEVER Sustainable
Coach’s new brand, Coachtopia, is the fashion house’s latest play to reach Gen Z. It claims to offer “sustainable” products made using “recycled, repurposed or renewable materials.” Sounds nice, right? But one of its most-hyped materials, “Coachtopia leather,” is basically ground-up scraps of skin from animals who were violently killed. 🤦 No matter what labels Coachtopia uses, leather is always a product of cruelty to animals and is never sustainable!
A sick cow lying in a filthy barn.
Animals in the international leather industry are commonly kept, transported, and killed in filthy, crowded conditions in which devastating zoonotic diseases can develop and spread.
Cows are crammed onto trucks where they typically go without food, water, or rest for the duration of the journey to the slaughterhouse, which can sometimes be days.
In the leather industry, cows are confined on extremely crowded farms, where workers castrate and brand them—often without painkillers. 😢 Much of the leather in the U.S. comes from other countries, like India, where workers force cows to march hundreds of miles in the heat without food or water to slaughter. If the cows collapse from exhaustion, their abusers sometimes break their tails or rub chili peppers and tobacco into their eyes to force them to get back up.
Before they’re killed, cows might be burned, electroshocked, or beaten. At slaughterhouses, workers typically stun them, hang them upside down, slit their throats, and tear off their skin. They’re sometimes still alive and kicking when they’re skinned and dismembered. 😱
Just like us, cows are sensitive individuals who can feel fear, pain, and joy.
Imagine how agonizing it would be to go through this abuse and violent death or see it happen in front of you as you’re slated for the same horror. The leather industry doesn’t care about cows’ feelings, tho. It puts cows through hell and makes things from their skin—and Coachtopia uses the leftover scraps to make clothing, bags, and other items.
Creating new products from old animal skin scraps isn’t a flex at all, but Coachtopia brags about its “circular” process to make consumers think it’s eco-friendly. It also uses “regenerative leather,” which means the skin comes from cows sent to slaughter by a farm that focuses on stuff like revitalizing soil. 😒 Bffr, Coachtopia—none of these labels do anything to prevent cows from enduring the cruelty inherent in leather production.
Cows like to be outdoors enjoying sunshine and freedom, just like us.
In addition to being cruel af, leather production fuels climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. It also pollutes local waterways with feces and other waste. In the Amazon rainforest, deforestation from cattle ranching alone causes 340 million tons of carbon to be released into the atmosphere each year.
Plus, skins from dead animals rot. To prevent this, companies treat them with tons of toxic chemicals that can end up in nearby soil and water. Think of all the lives these companies are endangering with these chemicals—everyone who works at a tannery or lives nearby is at risk.
Gen Z is one of the most sustainability-conscious generations, and Coachtopia knows how much we care about animals and the planet—and it’s exploiting our compassion. It uses buzzwords like “recycled,” “regenerative,” “circular,” and “sustainable” to market its leather to us. That’s called greenwashing—which is a way to try to trick consumers into believing the products they’re buying aren’t harmful to the planet. We’ll keep it 💯: To be truly sustainable, a company can’t exploit animals. 👏
Please urge Coachtopia to do the right thing for animals, the planet, and consumers by using only vegan materials for its products:
