Vegan Interior Design

Aline Dürr

• Publisher: Vegan Interior Design
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780648925019
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Interior Design

Vegan Food is becoming main stream! Vegan Fashion is rapidly catching up. But what about vegan homes, workplaces, hotels...?

Do you know if the production of your wall paint caused pain to animals? Do you know that the leather on your couch may not actually come from cows but cats or dogs? Do you know that your fluffy down pillow is posing a health risk to you? Do you know why towels are not vegan?

In this informative and educational book, Aline Dürr, award-winning interior architect and coach, explains what vegan interior design is, why it matters and how you can easily implement a healthy, cruelty-free and sustainable lifestyle in your home, your office, your restaurant or anywhere you like - at no extra cost and with no compromises in quality and luxury - whether you are actually vegan or not.

Materials & Finishes

As I have said before, this book is not meant to scare or upset you. The truth behind animal-derived products, no matter if they are food based or material based, is cruel. It is cruel because the worldwide demand for leather and wool, milk and eggs, down and fur, meat and silk cannot be met by romantic, beautiful small-scale animal farming as it is portrayed in my 2-year-old daughter’s picture books. Approximately 1 billion animals are killed every year for leather and hides alone.11

I have tried to describe the ‘production’ of leather, wool, down, fur and silk in a digestible way, but facts are facts and if you have a heart for animals, or compassion for all kinds of beings, the next chapters may surprise and even shock you. Please stay with me as the alternative materials shown at the end of each chapter will be easy to swap in to replace the cruel ones – mostly at no additional cost and with the same level of comfort and luxury.

One more point I would like to make is that just like there are many different levels of veganism, there are obviously also different levels of vegan interior design. There is an entry level in which people simply swap as many cruel materials as possible with cruelty-free materials. This level makes a MASSIVE difference for the animals and the environment and is a big leap forwards from the traditional ways.

At a more advanced level, people do not only swap cruel materials with cruelty-free ones but also look at the bigger scope. It includes sustainability concerns and looking into how cruelty-free products may indirectly impact the environment and the animals in a negative way – making them less cruelty-free than they may appear at first glance. It means ditching all sorts of materials made with petrochemicals, forms of plastic and other substances that are harmful for our planet and everyone in it. Due to a lot of misleading information and marketing strategies, as well as very complex and secretive manufacturing processes, it can be really hard to determine if a product is as cruelty-free, healthy and sustainable as it seems to be.

In terms of change, some people may just start with five to ten animal-based items that are simple to replace, others do a radical clear out. Some cannot stand the thought of having anything dead or animal-derived in their homes once they find out about the cruelty behind it, some do not want to throw out and waste something perfectly functional until it breaks. In my eyes, it does not really matter what level you are at. Everyone has got their own timeline and way of doing things; the most important thing is that you make informed choices. The following chapters are meant to give you a starting point and enough information to realise that a shift from our traditional ways is necessary for multiple reasons.

LEATHER

Myth 1: Leather is a by-product

Myth 2: Leather is organic and sustainable

Myth 3: Leather usually comes from cows

Facts

Leather is probably the most obvious non-vegan and ‘cruel’ material that is used in interior design. What is so bad about it? Yes, it is the skin of a dead animal, but isn’t it just a by-product and the animals died for food anyway? Unfortunately not! It is a common misconception that leather comes from cows that are being killed for meat. You have probably been told that you are doing a good thing when you buy leather because at least the skin of a dead cow did not go to waste, which makes it sustainable. The truth, however, could not be further from that.

To start with, leather is not a by-product. What will shock you even more is that the leather used for clothing, shoes, car interiors and furniture does not only come from dead cows but also very commonly from dogs, cats, seals, goats, deer, ostriches, lambs, buffalos and kangaroos. They are all bred, tortured and killed for the sole purpose of using their skin for decorative purposes. There is virtually no way to tell what kind of animal the leather you are wearing or sitting on came from. Even if a product says that it was made in Italy the raw materials came, most likely, from India or China.

Leather production is an industry in itself – a very large and profitable one. So I’ll repeat it one more time: leather is not a by-product! The leather industry in Bangladesh alone is worth billions of dollars a year.

Photo by Hannah Busing

Now that you know that, let’s get into some more gruesome details which are necessary for you to know to get the whole picture. If we take cow leather production in Brazil, for example (Brazil is the second largest leather producing country in the world), the typical order of things would be similar to this: a female cow is forcefully impregnated by a farmer sticking their arm up inside her. She then carries and grows her calf for nine long months of pregnancy, just as long as a human mother carries her baby. Once the calf is born it is usually taken away right away or within the next 48 hours (there may be farms that handle it differently but I am speaking about common international practice here). After the calf has been taken from its mother it will be kept in a tiny crate isolated from others, usually exposed to the elements and barely able to move, for about two to three years. Female cows are then used to continue the cycle and artificially impregnated to produce more babies. Males are loaded onto trucks and shipped to slaughterhouses that are up to 48 hours away. The trucks are overcrowded and there is no water or food. On arrival at the slaughterhouse, they are sent to the ‘knock box’ where they are knocked unconscious with different torturous tools. Unfortunately, in many cases they are still fully conscious when they are loaded onto the slaughter line, where their body parts are hacked off one by one and the animals are skinned.5

The leather production in India is very well summarised in the documentaries Earthlings (2005) and Dominion (2018) and well described in an article by Peter Popham for The Independent.12 In India, cows are ‘sacred’ and their special status is enshrined in law in most states except Kerala, Goa, West Bengal and states of the Northeast India. This leads to a huge amount of cattle trafficking, mainly to West Bengal and Kerala, as well as neighbouring Bangladesh. For some of the way, the cows are transported by truck or train, but for a large part they have to walk to their own death at a slaughterhouse. While the law allows for four cows to be transported per truck, up to 70 are usually put in.12 Train wagons are allowed to hold 80–100 cows; however, up to 900 are usually crammed in with up to half of them arriving dead. Once the cows are unloaded, a long and painful march begins for them. 10,000–15,000 cows EACH DAY are crossing the border to Bangladesh alone. To keep them moving, they are beaten with sticks and they are not allowed to rest or drink. 13 When they sink to their knees in exhaustion, they are violently pulled by their nose ropes and their tails are twisted or broken to force them back up. If that does not work the drivers rub hot chili peppers or tobacco into their eyes to keep them awake and moving.13 The cruelty does ...

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• Why Vegan Interior Design
• Materials & Finishes
• Spaces
• OUTLOOK
• Bibliography
• About the Author