"fur is green" is greenwash
Advertising regulators of Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Italy forbid “green” branding of fur. Canada must follow suite. As the signatures on this Petition keep rolling in, Canada’s Competition Bureau must soon realize that it cannot continue to allow the branding of fur as “green.”
Others before me have complained about the use of the slogan “fur is green” It is used by Alan Herscovici of the Fur Council of Canada and he remains unfazed by his critics. I have taken it upon myself to openly oppose this low form of greenwashing by starting this Petition. The slogan “fur is green” is a barrier to building fruitful dialog on the issue of honesty on climate change impact and on the issue of fur farming, Please sign. Your signature taken together with all the other signatures may be a small step overall, but certainly a good step to make a better world
To find out exactly what Alan Herscovici means by “fur is green” you need to look no further than the website of The Fur Council of Canada. It states that “fur is green” is: “A public relations campaign explaining the ethical values of the Canadian fur trade and correcting misconceptions circulated by eco-fundamentalists. Visit www.furisgreen.com” ----
Alan Herscovici portrays the fur industry as sustainable, ecological, natural, renewable, environmentally sound, etc. The trouble is that he has not substantiated his “green” claim with evidence and he doesn’t seem to understand the full implications of the “green” terminology that he uses. Instead, what has done is simply appropriated and used “green” in a vendetta against advocates of animal rights.
“Green” and “carbon footprint” are not just empty buzz words. They are a measure of products' and services' impact on climate change. The accepted science to make this measurement is by Life Cycle Analysis. The carbon footprint of mink fur was compared to other fabrics by CE Delft in 2011. The climate change impact of fur is 12 times that of cotton and 20 times that of acrylics. The biggest factor accounting for mink fur’s poor score is the large quantity of feed consumed by mink. It takes 563kg of feed to produce 1kg of fur.
CE Delft also compared mink fur finished clothing with faux furs for the life of the products from the time they are bought until and including their disposal. “A natural mink fur product will always have a higher environmental impact than faux fur, even when the lowest possible impact is used for the feed of the mink.”
There is no question that the fur industry relative to its size leaves a very large carbon footprint and it is wrong to call this industry “green."