Urban Outfitters’ Leather Sales Elicit PETA Black Sludge Dump

For Immediate Release:
March 22, 2022

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

PETA supporters brandishing buckets proclaiming, “Urban Outfitters: Dump Leather,” will gather outside the Urban Outfitters store downtown on Thursday and dump black sludge all over themselves to represent the environmental devastation caused by the leather industry. The action is part of PETA’s campaign calling on all Urban Outfitters Inc. brands to stop selling animal-derived materials—including leather.

When:    Thursday, March 24, 12 noon

Where:    Outside Urban Outfitters, 1627 Walnut St., Philadelphia

“Cows and calves lead short, miserable lives for leather bags and shoes, which require enormous amounts of energy and dangerous chemicals to produce,” says PETA U.S. Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges Urban Outfitters to cater to the growing demand from millennials and Gen Z for ethical, eco-friendly fashion and dump leather products.”

Leather production requires the use of 130 chemicals—including cyanide—and releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which contribute to the climate catastrophe. Exposés by PETA entities have revealed cows being burned, electroshocked, and beaten before slaughter for leather; workers strapping crying alpacas to a rack in the alpaca fleece industry; workers punching sheep in the wool industry; sensitive goats suffering from bloody, gaping wounds at mohair and cashmere operations; and workers tearing out birds’ feathers by the fistful for down.

PETA U.S.—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 or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.