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Apple confirms it will no longer use leather for new Apple accessories, starting today.
(www.macrumors.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
177 points (87.0% liked)
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Apple claimed this was for environmental reasons, not animal rights reasons.
Tanning is very polluting. Even throwing away the hides is better for the environment than tanning them.
It makes perfect sense as a PR or cost-cutting move.
PR
But the bigger issue is the amount of environmental destruction beef farming has on the planet. Why don’t we stop that instead?
But it does reduce the profitability of beef. Thus reducing operations and preventing more carbon.
Less people would buy beef if the prices increased thus the supply will follow :)
Apple doesn’t have much control of that.
Anyone that buys cow products has control of it
But then, if it depends on customers to collectively stop buying something, we’re doomed already.
One less animal product consumer prevents the deaths of many animals. You’re using the all or nothing fallacy.
Ever heard of plants?
Well vegans do it, so it must be available enough
soylent would like to have a word.
I get like half my calories from it
it will probably be a year before I get around to that
but I'll let you know
Have you tried beyond burgers they taste just like the real thing and so humanity can skip the cruelty of lining cows in a narrow chute and slaughtering them unceremoniously.
Research says red meat isn’t for your heart health
Red meat is also a class A2 carcinogen byw.
Same goes for processed plant based products if you want healthy tasty meals there’s plenty of whole food planted based recipes out there for you to try.
Not a waste product, they rely on the profits of everything, it's a product just as much as meat is and slowling demand for it is good.
Well meat farms produce a lot of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, so reducing any kind of demand from a ranch is probably better than nothing. That said, I thought the leather used for iPhones weren’t from animals we’d traditionally use for eating. Moleskin or something?
It reduces the profitability of the meat industry
It's more enshittification. Making it cheaper and worse and telling everyone it's an upgrade.
OP is editorializing that it's for vegan ethics.
Why is it worse?
Leather lasts a lot longer and personally I think it feels better. But the fake leathers often fall apart really quickly and can't be cared for like leather. A maintained leather item can last centuries, not that an accessory would last very long but faux leather crumbles pretty quickly
I'm curious how many animals are killed to make leather. I would think that the animal is killed for food and the byproduct is leather. If we're still raising feed cattle and just wasting the leather, wouldn't that be worse for the environment?
If you pay for it, it's not a byproduct
You're tight, but I couldn't think of a better term for it. I suspect leather is made with material that is generated not for leather making but as a consequence of the meat industry. And since when is "using the whole animal" a bad thing? Unless I'm wrong and there are animals killed specifically for their leather, that would be pretty fucked up.
Right, when we make things out of wood sure it's killing trees, but it's a sustainable resource that is better than mining for other materials that don't biodegrade. Of course in leathers case it is literally a byproduct so there is very little environmental concers. Garentee faux leather is much more environmentally unfriendly
Like almost everything, this announcement sounds more like green washing.
For your wood example, wood is actually a great green resource. It's not like they're cutting down the old growth trees anymore. They selectively cut and they have tree farms. Trees are also not as good of a carbon sync as people tend to think they are. Yes, they absorb carbon over their lifetime, but when they die, they rot and release it back into the atmosphere. The carbon we're worried about is the stuff that came out of the ground that was there for millions of years, which is far longer than a tree lifespan.