Faux fur vs. Real fur: The Environmental Perspective

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Fashion houses around the world have banned the use of animal fur in their collections. Their reasons span from environmental concerns to designers’ personal aversions to fur.

“I’ve been vegan for about the last year… When you look at how most of our meat, our animal products, are raised, from a health standpoint, I didn’t feel that I should eat those things anymore,” said designer Tom Ford in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily. He has significantly decreased the amount of real fur he uses in his collections, but is not entirely fur-free.

Brands such as Gucci, Michael Kors, Versace and, of course, Stella McCartney, have all committed to not using animal fur in their collections. With improved methods of creating faux fur, it can often be difficult to tell the difference between the two.

“Due to technological advances in fabrications, we now have the ability to create a luxe aesthetic using non-animal fur,” designer Michael Kors said in a statement obtained by The Business of Fashion.

In September 2018, the British Fashion Council hosted its London Fashion Week with a request for no animal fur in participating designers’ collections. The council came to this decision by surveying the fashion houses who were set to show collections at the event, many of which had already transitioned from using real animal fur in their products to faux fur.

Burberry was one of the most public supporters of this request during London Fashion Week, where it showed a giant rainbow cape made of a rich faux fur, modeled by Cara Delevigne, symbolizing a commitment to both LGBTQ rights and animal rights.

While the idea of saving animals by refusing to use real fur in fashion sounds like a valiant thing to do, new studies show faux fur may be worse for the environment than real fur.

The key argument in this debate is how real and faux fur weather the test of time. Two competing organizations conducted studies examining this fact. The study commissioned by animal rights organizations and CE Delft found that real fur coats are worse for the environment, while the study done by the International Fur Trade Federation revealed that a faux fur coat is worse.

The pro-faux fur argument examines the environmental benefits and detractions of hunting mink fur to be used in clothing. In brief, minks consume enormous amounts of meat-based foods. So, the demand for mink fur causes a lot of meat to be eaten by the minks, which in turn increases the carbon footprint of the animal. It is more environmentally sustainable to eat less meat, so raising mink just to be killed for coats is essentially a waste of the meat product the mink consumed, according to the study done by CE Delft.

“It takes plenty of land and resources to feed the animals who are slaughtered only for their fur,” said sophomore math major Justin Slud, from the University of Maryland’s Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals club.

Some animal fur is actually very sustainable to use in clothing, like rabbit fur, where there is a large animal population and they are herbivores.

The pro-fur argument focuses on the environmental sustainability of real fur in terms of its longevity and its ability to be biodegradable. The pro-fur study, commissioned by the International Fur Trade Federation, also argues that real fur is more likely to be upcycled and sold again in consignment stores. Secondhand fur sold at these stores cuts down on the need for more fur to be produced.

In terms of biodegradability, real fur won hands down. Since it comes from nature, it will break down in nature again. With faux fur, it is typically made of polyester, which is plastic spun into a thread. Plastic could take anywhere from 500 to over 1,000 years to biodegrade, according to a study done by the U.S. National Park Service.

“Nothing is a perfect solution… Fake fur is just plastic in another form, so if your goal is reducing your use of oil-based fibers and the micro fibers they shed, that won’t be your choice,” said Jo Paoletti, professor emeritus of American studies at the University of Maryland.

So whether faux fur or real fur fits your moral standard, the clear answer to this argument is that there is no answer. There are cute jackets that come in both real fur and faux fur; as to which one has a lower ecosystem and environmental cost, the question is up to a personal moral compass.