Hi there, vegans and vegan curious.
It's Margaret.
And today I want to talk with you about leather.
And why we need to learn more about the leather industry,
and why it is an incredibly important part
of the vegan movement.
[intro]
A lot of people tend to think that leather is not really a big deal.
That it is a minor byproduct of the agricultural industry,
that leather is just a result of the way that we eat meat,
and things like that.
We eat cows and then we get their leather.
But it's far more than that.
And I hope today that the research that I've done
is going to help you to understand
how important it is to make leather,
and awareness of what leather really is
- what it really represents -
an important part of the vegan movement.
I would argue that leather is a toxic material
from start to finish.
That it hurts people, and the environment,
in ways that we can't begin to understand.
That we are only beginning to understand.
And that's what I really want to address in this video.
When you think about leather, most of us tend to have positive associations.
I mean, think about it for a moment:
ask yourself what you think of leather.
And this may be different if you're vegan already,
but especially if you're not a vegan,
consider for a moment what you think of leather.
A lot of people have very positive associations with leather.
It's even used in high-end fragrances,
like Hermes perfumes.
We love getting into cars that have new leather seating,
we love that rustic, musty smell of the leather.
And if you're vegan, you may not feel that way.
But that is the way that the general population
associates themselves with leather.
They think of luxury, they think of value,
they think of natural beauty.
But leather is something entirely different.
First of all, leather is not natural at all.
Obviously, our skin is designed to degrade,
just like the rest of our body after when we die.
In a normal body if a normal animal dies,
their skin will begin to decompose almost immediately.
But leather is treated in such a way that even when it's buried,
it takes it about 50 years to decompose
under normal circumstances.
And that's because a lot of chemicals are added to leather.
We use chromium,
we use a number of other things,
and even in vegetable tanned processes,
we use chemicals that are very damaging to our waterways.
But it doesn't really matter how we're doing it,
whatever we're doing, we're changing leather
from what it essentially is,
which is skin,
into a commodity that can be used for longer periods of time.
I think most of us,
whether you're vegan or not,
you know that leather is the skin of an animal,
sometimes the skin of a very young animal.
Calf leather, which is used for most women's shoes,
for higher end items,
is made from baby cows and their skin.
And the same thing goes for gloves
that are often made of baby goat skin,
and you're looking at the skin of infants,
that's been treated to make it very tender and soft for consumers.
So there's that aspect, there's the animal aspect.
But I assume that many of you are already familiar
with the fact that leather comes from animals.
What I want you to be aware of today
is the human cost of leather.
Leather is produced all over the world,
there are only about 100 leather tanneries
left in the United States,
but in many other parts of the worlds (and that's the entire United States)
In many other parts of the world they are
far more concentrated.
And they tend to be concentrated in very poor countries.
Countries like Bangladesh and India and Mexico and Colombia
have far more tanneries than most of the rest of the world combined.
And in these tanneries,
employees are treated horribly.
And it is a form of slavery.
And if you think that ethical clothing is important at all,
if you're concerned about fast fashion
and the impact of buying inexpensive clothing at Wal-Mart,
you need to be far more aware of the leather industry.
It is far more destructive.
Children who work in this industry -
Let's just talk about India.
Because I think that this is important to understand.
The people who produce leather in those countries
are "Untouchables" the dalits,
and they work over 10 hours a day for about $37 a month,
according to Human Rights Watch.
And children working in these leather tanneries
can be as young as seven years old.
They're exposed to incredibly toxic chemicals
ten hours a day or more.
If they get sick, if they get hurt from the horrible chemicals
that are used in these plants,
then they have to stay home and they're not payed.
And their family goes hungry.
Most of the people who are desperate,
because that is one of the best paying forms
of work that they can engage in,
and so they're willing to do it,
no matter what the costs are.
Human Rights Watch reports that
most of the people they encountered
that worked in these tanneries
had horrible skin lesions, hands that were disintegrating,
amputations from various accidents and things like that.
It's an incredibly hazardous industry,
and one where you're exposed to an incredible amount
of dangerous chemicals.
Most of us don't know the origin of our leather.
When you look at a pair of shoes and it says it's made in Italy,
the ingredients could be from anywhere.
There are a few tanneries remaining in Italy,
but the likelihood is that leather either came from a
factory in South America, or perhaps Morocco,
or from India or a place like Bangladesh.
And it's something that we don't think about that much.
But the people that work in those factories,
as I said,
are treated extremely poorly, work incredibly long hours,
in incredibly deplorable conditions.
Very few of them have any protection at all from the chemicals that they're using,
they stand up to their waists in hazardous materials,
with no gloves, no waders, nothing -
in these chemicals, in order to produce leather.
Even if you don't care about the people that are suffering from this,
and I hope you do,
it's important to understand the environmental impact as well.
In Bangladesh, they're dumping over 22 tonnes of wastewater into the rivers every single
day from these factories, from these tanneries.
And factory is really a glorified word.
I'm going to show some pictures of what tanneries
really look like, and these are from tanneries in Morocco,
where legislation is actually a great deal better.
These tanneries, you will see
still that people are not wearing protection,
that they are standing in the middle of this
hyper-toxic chemical bath.
And that's what the workers do.
But you have to remember,
that in many of the places where this is done,
there's no water treatment whatsoever.
In the United States, a tannery is going to have
water treatment that will protect the general public.
But in a place like India,
that simply doesn't exist.
And the same thing in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh,
none of the tanneries -
of the 150 tanneries that are producing leather there,
none of them treat their water.
They send 22 tonnes of untreated water into the river
every single day,
which poisons the drinking water.
That water is going straight into the rivers,
which then goes into the oceans, which harms all of us.
And it's not the only source of pollution.
They also feed the scraps from the leather
to chickens and fish.
And this is from the treated leather,
and so it contains hexavalent chromium,
which is a dangerous pollutant,
which we're going to talk about that in a second,
but they're feeding hexavalent chromium to fish
and chickens, which are then consumed
by the general population.
Which can then make them sick.
So this is a cycle of pollution
that affects everyone in these countries.
And particularly when you're looking at the developing world,
tanneries are one of the most violent sources of pollution
that damage so many people.
And it really is a very serious industry,
that we need to know more about, and we don't.
As much as we may hate the factories,
that create clothing and other things
in the developing world,
I think it's important to consider the fact
that, as bad as those factories may be,
the amount of pollution that is created by the tanning industry is far worse.
If you, in particular, care about addressing
exploitation of people in the developing world,
the number one thing that you can do
is to stop buying leather.
You do not know where your leather comes form.
No matter how expensive the item of clothing
that you have is,
you don't know the source of that leather.
It could easily be Indian leather, that has been sent to Italy and turned into $900 pairs
of shoes.
You simply do not know.
And every time that you're buying leather,
you are potentially supporting the abuse of people in the developing world.
In the United States and other developed countries,
a lot of the leather that's tanned is tanned using
vegetable tannins.
And vegetable tannins are slightly better for the environment.
They still do cause harm.
But they are a little bit less toxic.
However, they're extremely brittle and hard,
and so the kind of leather that you get from them
is stuff that works really well in workman's gloves,
for the soles of shoes, very thick leather for soles
that it doesn't really matter when they get wet,
because when vegetable tanned leather gets wet,
it can be terribly damaged,
but it it's thick enough, it will do just fine.
So it can be used for soles, but it couldn't be used for,
say, leather uppers and things like that.
When I speak about leather,
I'm talking about chromium-tanned leather,
which represents 90% of the product of the leather industry.
So, chromium is used to give leather it's suppleness,
to give it the characteristics that allow us to turn it into
things like shoes.
If you look at a leather upper, or a handbag,
that's moveable in your hands, that doesn't
immediately become damaged if it's exposed to moisture,
chromium is really good for helping that.
Most tanning procedures use something called Chromium three.
And trivalent chromium, or chromium three,
is an extremely useful material, because it allows leather to remain supple, to remain
soft, even after some exposure to water.
So that's why, if you get your shoes wet once or twice,
or your jacket, it's not going to become destroyed immediately.
The reason that it lasts a little longer is because of that chromium.
The chromium has given it some suppleness that it wouldn't have otherwise.
Vegetable tanned leathers have less of that,
and that's why we pretty much tend to use them solely for the soles of our shoes, for
outdoor gloves and things like that.
Now, one of the challenges with chromium is that over time, it oxidizes.
And so trivalent chromium turns into chromium 6, or hexavalent chromium when it oxidizes.
So, over time,
after the leather has been finished,
after the finished product is created,
or after it begins to process in the area where they are tanning the leather,
it releases hexavalent chromium.
And hexavalent chromium is very damaging.
It can cause neural damage, it can cause toxicity,
it's linked with cancer - it's an extremely dangerous substance.
As a result, some studies have attempted to find out
how much chromium 6 is included in emissions from finished leather goods.
And some studies have been done, but most of them run about seven days in length,
and those studies have shown ninety-five percent
of leather goods contain chromium,
and that most of them are oxidizing hexavalent chromium.
And in fairly large amounts.
But at the beginning, it's primarily trivalent chromium.
Chromium three is not that dangerous,
and so, even though chromium was found in 95% of these goods,
they still thought, you know what, this isn't so bad,
because at least most of it is trivalent chromium.
However, towards the end of these studies,
they usually noticed that more hexavalent chromium was being oxidized.
And of course, hexavalent chromium is the more dangerous version of chromium.
In answer to some of these questions,
studies have been done
that have looked at chromium emissions from leather over longer periods of time.
And there was a study done last year in Sweden,
that looked at the amount of chromium
emissions over an eight month period.
And they discovered that after 7-10 days,
the amount of hexavalent chromium being oxidized started to increase.
During the first 7-10 days, there was only about
2.6 mg/kg of hexavalent chromium being released by these leather goods.
But after ten days, it started to increase,
and after a few days it was at 9 mg per kg.
And it stayed around there for the entire eight month period,
sometimes higher, sometimes lower,
but an average of around 9 mg/kg.
Which is much higher than the level that was reported in previous studies.
Now, the danger with this is that,
the longer that you wear leather, the more damaged it becomes.
And interestingly, some studies have said,
get rid of your clothing when it's old and worn,
and you won't have a problem.
But the challenge is,
who keeps their clothes for 7-10 days?
I don't know about you, but I'm not going to throw out my leather jacket after 7 days.
And so, this becomes a serious problem.
Since no one throws out a leather jacket after 10 days,
the likelihood is that you're going to be keeping it around ,
and the more time that leather jacket sits around either in your closet, or on your body,
it's going to start releasing more and more hexavalent chromium.
And that hexavalent chromium is the dangerous form of chromium,
and it can actually cause all sorts of problems.
The amount, that 9 mg/kg was about 50 times higher than what was required to produce allergic
reactions in people who are sensitive to chromium,
and the thing with chromium is that it actually causes more allergic dermatitis - you're more
likely to get a rash or something the longer that you're exposed to it.
So, over time,
you become more likely to get a reaction from exposure to hexavalent chromium or to regular
chromium.
Either one could cause an allergic reaction.
But that just keeps going up over time.
So there's really no way to eliminate that risk.
But what about the toxicity?
This was a little bit harder for me to find out.
And again, if anyone has access to any articles that I was not able to find, please check
the articles on my website.
I'm going to have an extensive bibliography
of some of the information that I used to research this video,
but what I would like to say,
is that, at least we know that around 500 mg/kg
was enough to kill a rabbit.
And although rabbits are extremely sensitive creatures,
and I don't think if you were a leather jacket,
it's going to kill you.
That's ridiculous.
But, it's worth nothing that you've got a 9 mg/kg emission of hexavalent chromium in
your shoes - so 9 mg/kg,
and yet the lethal dose for a rabbit
is 500 mg/kg.
And obviously,
that rabbit is a lot smaller than you are,
it's not anywhere near the size,
but it still is somewhat troubling
that a rabbit will die with that level of exposure to chromium,
because we're getting such high exposure through things like shoes.
Especially for women.
If you wear shoes without socks,
it's a much higher risk for you, I would imagine,
based on the research that I have done.
There's definitely more exposure there,
and women do wear shoes without socks,
and some guys wear shoes without socks.
If you're doing that, you're exposing your body to a great deal of this chromium.
If I had known this before in my life,
I never would have bought leather.
It absolutely sickens me
to know the kind of damage that I've probably caused
to children in the developing world.
It's sickening.
And when you see photos of the kids
that are working in these factories,
and I encourage you to take a look.
Take a look at what a leather tannery looks like in Dhaka,
in Bangladesh.
Take a look.
And think about whether you ever can make the excuse that leather is more natural, and
therefore you'll wear it.
I don't think you can.
I honestly don't think that anyone with a conscience or heart
will ever be able to buy leather after they look at that stuff.
And it's something that I know not everybody knows.
It's something I didn't know.
It's definitely something that the industry doesn't want you to know.
Because there is so little research done on it.
I had to dig a lot through scholarly articles in order to be able to get the information
that I presented to you in this video,
but it's hard to find out,
and what you do find out is very disturbing.
And, at the very least,
promise me,
promise me that you're going to take a look
at what tanneries really look like.
What happens to the people that work in them.
And I dare you to go out and buy leather shoes after that and feel comfortable about it.
I know that PVC and even polyurethane, which is a better material,
you can use polyurethane,
there's lots of bamboo fabrics,
they can even use cork and other materials
in order to create shoes.
There's a lot of different options.
We can use textiles, we can use other things.
But what we shouldn't be using is leather.
And I just cannot justify it.
When I see those things,
I don't see how...
I mean, I'm already a vegan,
I don't want to hurt animals,
I don't want to lead to profit for animal abusers,
but, aside from that,
when you look at the human health risk,
and you look at what it does to people,
that's enough for me to say,
"I could never touch that."
And so, this little controversy that's been going on
on YouTube, with people saying "oh, you know, it's
not such a big deal if you wear leather,
don't pick on people for wearing leather"
I don't want to pick on anyone for wearing leather.
But what I want them to do, is to find out
the reality of leather.
I think a lot of people simply don't know,
because it's very hard to find out this information.
It is not easy, they don't make it easy for you.
Everyone wants you to think of leather as this
delicious-smelling thing that's so worthy
that it should be put into perfumes.
But it's not.
And I really hope that all of you will take this seriously.
And that even if you're not vegan,
that seeing this video will help change your mind,
at least about learning more about this topic.
And that's all that I can wish.
Anyway, thank you so much for watching.
And please let me know what you think in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe,
click the little "bell" icon so that you get notified about new videos when they come out,
and I just encourage you to take a look,
learn a little bit more, and have a beautiful day,
and please don't buy leather!
Thank you so much,
take care, bye!
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