Green Options

Rock Angelina Jolie’s leather look without the guilt by exploring eco-friendly alternatives and how to wear them with sophistication for a sexy fall ensemble.

Get Angelina Jolie’s leather look the eco-conscious way and pull it off right with sophisticated accents that will put a classy twist on your edgy ensemble.

Last month, I wrote about the world’s largest leather exporter leaving the Amazon. This week there is even bigger news. The world’s largest meat exporter is leaving.

Just a couple of weeks ago, soya traders agreed to extend a moratorium on buying soya linked to Amazon destruction. However, as discussed in January, 80% of Amazon deforestation is from cattle farming. With continued involvement of major international organizations and companies — Greenpeace, McDonald’s, Nike, Wal-Mart, and Carrefour — a giant leap in protection of the Amazon was made a few days ago.

Nike has stopped all imports of leather from the Amazon region of Brazil, after a Greenpeace report claimed that its shoes and trainers could be speeding up the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest and contributing to global warming.

The report, published last month, revealed how cattle hides from deforested areas were entering the supply chains of global brands including Nike, Clarks, Adidas and Reebok.

According to the NGO, deforestation for cattle ranching in Brazil alone is now the biggest driver of deforestation anywhere in the world.

Leather manufacturer ISA Tan Tec will spend $8.7 million on its new, Vietnam-based tannery aimed at producing leather using fewer resources than industry standards. The German/Chinese company was founded by CEO Thomas Schneider, who said that the demand from its clients for ecologically friendly leather is increasing rapidly. The Ho Chi Minh City location, set to open in mid-2009, will have 280 employees churning out two million square meters of leather a year.

Editor’s note: Leather hasn’t come under quite the scrutiny of other animal products like fur, but our friends at Life Goggles ask a good question today: should an environmentalist wear the stuff? To answer the question, LG blogger Adam interviews Katleen Baum of georgette, a Belgian store that specializes in “animal friendly footwear.” This post was originally published on Thursday, May 8, 2008.

Katleen Baum and her twin sister Liesbet run georgette, an online and real world shop in Antwerp which specializes in animal friendly footwear. The website is a delight. Handily written in English, you navigate with a flea circus and clicking on a link can give you a nice surprise. Oh, and the shoes are great too. Katleen spoke to Life Goggles about reconciling veganism with wearing leather.

“Ever since we were kids, we were always fascinated with fashion and shoes. And also with animals. From the moment we realized that the animal we saw in the country, ended up on our dinner plates, we did not want to eat it anymore. So we became vegetarian and evolved to veganism. No biggie, right? But as time progresses, you start to question other things…

Every vegetarian or vegan, some day, will be confronted with the same dilemma: how to reconcile a strict vegetarian-vegan diet with wearing leather?