Dictators’ Dangerous Leather Use Prompts PETA Plea Near Russian Embassy: ‘Don’t Be Like Them!’
Dictators’ Dangerous Leather Use Prompts PETA Plea Near Russian Embassy: ‘Don’t Be Like Them!’
London – With anxiety ramping up worldwide over war-hungry rhetoric from Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, PETA has placed eye-catching messages near the Russian embassy in Notting Hill decrying yet another way the notorious autocrats cause suffering and devastation: by wearing planet- and animal-killing leather. PETA urges the public to avoid being like Putin or Jong Un in any way by refraining from purchasing leather, which is always the product of violence.
The digital billboards can be found at 76 Notting Hill Gate at the entrance to the tube station, which is commonly used by people going to Portobello Road Market – widely known for the sale of leather items.
Images can also be found here. Credit London Lites.
“Everyone can choose non-violence and good over evil by rejecting the leather industry – which drives the climate catastrophe, kills cows by the million, and even raises cancer rates among tannery workers and those who live downstream from tanneries’ effluent,” says PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk. “Let’s dress for peace for every living, feeling being by picking vegan materials that also protect the planet.”
Leather is a billion-dollar co-product of the meat industry. Profits from leather sales drive the slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals each year, which perpetuates horrifically violent cruelty to animals along with the destruction of land and pollution of water and air.
Animal agriculture – which includes the leather industry – is responsible for nearly one-fifth of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. The World Bank reports that cattle ranching has caused over 80% of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest since 1970, and because of fires – many of which are deliberately started to clear land to raise cows and grow crops to feed them – along with hotter temperatures and droughts, parts of the Amazon are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb.
In addition, turning skin into leather requires significant energy and dangerous chemicals – including formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and cyanide-based oils, dyes, and finishes. Sustainable vegan leather made from apples, cork, corn, grapes, mushrooms, paper, pineapples, soya, or tea mimics the properties of leather without the cruelty to animals or the environmental devastation.
The visuals for the guerilla marketing campaign were created by advertising agency Archer Troy. PETA US will also display chalk art depicting the Putin ad outside the UN office in New York and the Russian embassy in Washington, DC.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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