‘Save the Duck’ is PETA’s 2019 Company of the Year

All-Vegan Retailer Honored for Its Warm and Stylish Feather-Free Outerwear

For Immediate Release:
December 9, 2019

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

For expanding the luxury vegan outerwear market around the world and sparing countless birds the agony of their feathers being ripped out in the cruel down industry, Save the Duck has been named PETA’s 2019 Company of the Year.

Instead of using down feathers in its jackets, Save the Duck pioneered the groundbreaking insulation technology Plumtech. The Milan-based retailer opened its first store in Asia—specifically in China, the world’s top down supplier—earlier this year and was the first Italian fashion brand to achieve the coveted B Corp certification, which is reserved for the “best performers at a social and environmental level.” The company’s founder, Nicolas Bargi, says, “I didn’t understand why [the industry] continued to use down for jackets. I had a conscience.”

“In every way, Save the Duck’s clothing flies high above that of lazy, uncreative outerwear companies that rely on the fur and feathers from abused and slaughtered animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is recognizing this conscientious company for its perfect puffers that prove that the future of fashion is vegan.”

In the down industry, workers commonly clamp live birds upside down between their knees and tear out handfuls of feathers as the animals struggle and shriek in pain. Birds are often plucked so violently that their skin rips open, leaving them with gaping wounds that workers then sew shut—without giving the animals any pain relief. A PETA exposé of the down industry in China documented that workers on farms connected to “humane”-certified and “responsible” companies left sick and injured geese and ducks to die slowly. Dead birds were found decaying in crates and ponds, and others were tossed outside like trash.

Past award winners include WeWork, Netflix, Beyond Meat, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising Bangkok, Daiya, and Emulate.

PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.