Plastic Bag Ban Prompts Anti-Wool Ads
PETA’s ‘Wear Vegan’ Campaign Takes Aim at a Planet Killer As Bad as Single-Use Plastic
For Immediate Release:
March 9, 2020
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
With New York’s plastic bag ban in full effect, PETA has placed ads on bus shelters in the heart of downtown Albany calling out the environmental damage caused by the production of another material: wool.
In Australia—the world’s top exporter of wool—the wool industry is the second-largest producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and is driving ecological catastrophes like the wildfires that have reportedly killed around 100,000 sheep on Kangaroo Island alone. Sheep also require energy-intensive feed that’s grown with large amounts of chemical fertilizer, and they generate massive amounts of manure.
“Every purchase of a wool garment drives an industry that’s spewing out pollutants and fueling catastrophic climate change,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “New Yorkers see the value in banning single-use plastic bags, and PETA’s ads urge everyone to go a step further by choosing vegan knits that are as sustainable as reusable shopping bags.”
In addition to polluting land, air, and water, the production of wool causes sheep immense suffering. A PETA video exposé recorded on sheep farms in Australia shows a farm manager carving swaths of flesh from lambs’ hindquarters as the animals thrash and cry. One worker bragged, “I hit one [sheep] so hard I knocked it out.” PETA has released 13 exposés of the global wool industry on four continents since 2014, all of which have revealed abuse of sheep, and nine shearers and one farmer have pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals as a result.
The ads are located outside the SUNY Plaza Park (at the intersection of Broadway and Hudson Avenue) and at 115 N. Pearl St., 101 S. Pearl St., and 90 S. Pearl St.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
