Cruelty-free winter clothing (and bedding)

Recently I needed to get a warm winter coat. I was in a discount fashion store and came across a rack with some amazing coats at really good prices. There were all these high-end brands and really cool designs that looked so good.

I ended up getting not one but two coats. But when I got home I read the tag of one of them and it said that the filling was down made with duck/waterfowl feathers.

I thought about this. This is not right. I know that if humans somewhere are taking feathers from ducks to use for clothing, it cannot be good for the ducks. Its not like someone is going along the shore of some idyllic pond where there happen to be ducks nesting and non-invasively collecting feathers that happen to be there.

The reality I’m sure is more like some horrendous prison where unimaginable numbers of ducks are kept in poor conditions with extensive suffering. I cannot consider wearing a garment that was made with the suffering of innocent creatures like that a good thing.

So returned the duck down coat (the other was synthetic!) and went online to a couple retail stores’ websites to look at women’s coats and quite sadly under the viewing options you cannot even select between synthetic and non-synthetic-animal-based downs. To me that is the first step of cruelty. At least give people the ability to choose whether to avoid inflicting suffering! Not giving the choice is itself a form of imposing suffering.

Then I went to REI which did in fact offer a choice. Good for them. I did find a really nice coat made with PrimaLoft™ insulation.

I would not encourage throwing away any existing clothes because of the materials in it, or even not buying something secondhand. But if you are buying a new item, I would encourage you to seek out items which do not contain down made from feathers.

The reality is – and I do not even need to look at any sites with info or videos about this – is that there is a huge part of the clothing industry based on feathers taken from animals that are imprisoned and no doubt living in horrible conditions.  It is wrong to imprison any form of life.

An upside of using synthetic insulating materials is that they may actually be easier and less expensive to care for.

Its sad to me that there is often discussion about the problem with so many people incarcerated in prisons, yet then there are so many other life forms which are being imprisoned by humans just to meet their “needs” which have morphed into cruel “greeds”.

I’m sick of human cruelty which always seems to be based on the attitude that humans have a right to inflict suffering at will on any other organisms.