VEGAN

For many years now, the aspect of veganism has been more common and many fashion companies have changed their values towards introducing vegan products, but there’s a catch!

Personally, I have been vegetarian for about four years now, and about a couple of years ago, I decided to completely stop purchasing leather goods because of the animal cruelty. However, becoming completely vegan is more common for me in the summer, but I am trying for it to become a 365 days thing! 

On another side, why do fashion companies decide to introduce vegan goods, when it is not necessarily in the company’s values? Well for an honest answer, they follow the trend, in hopes of ‘’feeding’’ the needs of their common and new customers. For example, Matt & Nat are known for their high quality, vegan backpacks, but are they actually vegan and are they made with sustainable materials? Maybe not, and this is the case with many other companies who use vegan materials, because in fact, vegan leather produces more toxins and chemicals than real leather, which is quite surprising! Well in fact, vegan leather is usually made out of a ton of different chemicals and especially, PLASTIC. Not the plastic we gather from our polluted oceans, but plastic that is made in different factories to accommodate the companies who introduce vegan leather, thinking it would help the animals and our consumers, but it affects our environment more than anything!

This post is not necessarily related to the environment, because I talked about that a little too much, but more about how we shop and why we decide to purchase certain goods. Why do some of use purchase a vegan bag when we eat meat on a daily basis? Why do we eat tofu when we just purchased a vegan wallet? Some decide to associate themselves with the new trends, no matter what they are because they want to fit it. However, by doing this, you are supporting pollution and horrible working conditions because without a good and sustainable manufacturer, vegan leather is worse than real leather. We need to get informed before making large purchases, but it is not necessarily the case for half of us, which is quite disappointing. I cannot stress this enough, but companies are not the ones who support unethical products, but we, the consumers, are the ones who support this. We continue to purchase products that are cheap and because they are trendy, but do not know the story behind all of this. We are blinded by the cruelty behind animals, yet we continue to support that, even when we are drastically informed about everything.

In general, we need to be careful regarding our different shopping habits, because without that, changes will never rise to surfaces and fashion companies will continue to accommodate our needs, which are not necessarily ethical.