I’ve spotted ads promoting fur as environmentally friendly. Isn’t this a sham?

I remember being maybe five years old and having a lucky charm that I rubbed and rubbed as though it were a magic rosary straight from the land of unicorns and fairies. Until one day I realized where it really came from: a dead rabbit. It was like waking up and realizing you’re Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

Plenty of animal lovers were equally horrified when they spotted the fur industry’s latest marketing drive. In case you haven’t seen the billboards, magazine ads and Web banners, the Fur Council of Canada (FCC) has been pushing the green side of fur for several months now. 

The ads keep a-comin’ (including new website banners claiming that a red beaver coat with raccoon trim is a “beautifully Canadian eco-luxury”), and the picketers keep taking to the streets. The question is, is the fur industry right? Is fur green? Those ads portraying an environmental activist clad head to toe in fur would certainly have you believe so.

Do a little trolling on the Furisgreen.com site and you’ll notice the lore of the noble Aboriginal trapper is the primary marketing tool. There’s lots of “circle of life” talk as well as one “educational” image of a Cree trapper in front of a tent-side fire that asks, “When his family has eaten the beaver roast, should he throw the fur away?” 

Thanks for the rhetorical question, guys, but seriously, no one’s arguing that traditional native rights to trapping and living off the land should be taken away. (The Canadian Federation of Humane Societies does say humane trapping standards need to be strengthened.) More to the point, industry stats tell us 80 to 85 per cent of the world’s fur comes from farms – not native trappers.

Still, the campaign makes the green case that fur is a natural, renewable resource. Renewable, yes, but natural? Not when you cram thousands of minks and foxes in steel cages and feed them bits of slaughterhouse by-products.

Naturally, mink farmers have found a way to spray-paint a little green into their sales pitch. According to Fur Commission USA (which represents 400 mink farmers), slaughterhouse feed is one of the main reasons farmed mink can be considered so “sustainable.” In fact, those hungry, waste-eating mink help “reduce the environmental impact of the agricultural sector as a whole.” Isn’t that lovely?

By that logic, of course, it would be peachy-green to skin all the many house pets fed a steady stream of low-grade abattoir off-cuts.

The “nothing is wasted” angle is a big thrust of the Fur Council campaign as well. And, yes, it’s true Aboriginal hunters are wonderfully holistic when it comes to making use of the whole animal, but I don’t know any Yorkvillers who are eating mink tenderloin for dinner. You?

The FCC also points out that trapping is necessary to control overpopulation. I ran that by the World Wildlife Fund’s Peter Ewins, who called the rationale “exploitative,” saying culling tends to happen when humans destabilize natural systems.

Now, not all the points raised by the council sound so outlandish. Fur is biodegradable, they say. In fact, there’s even a tidbit about composting your old fur coat in your garden, for god’s sake. Of course, this might be possible if chemicals (like carcinogenic formaldehyde) weren’t added at the dressing stage to prevent those hides from decomposing on your shoulders.

Maybe the whole fossil-fuel-free nature of fur does, as the council argues, make it greener than, say, a synthetic jacket made of petroleum-based fibres. A mink farm doesn’t need much heating or lighting, right? And wearing an animal plucked from the wild is kind of like eating free-range chicken. 

Well, the Humane Society of the U.S. points to fossil fuels bubbling beneath the surface. First, there’s the gas used in snowmobiles or four-wheelers ridden to check live traps daily, as well as the fossil fuels involved in growing feed for confined animals and shipping their carcasses around the world. Not to mention that fur may be the only item of clothing that needs to be kept in refrigerated storage during the warmer months.

One industry claim that you do have to credit is that fur is undeniably durable and recyclable. True preloved proponents argue that wearing second-hand fur – either as is or recycled into new purses, belts, or even earrings by young indie designers – is as green as wearing Goodwill wool, cotton or polyester.

Okay, so sporting them could still land you a pretty icy reception in many circles that feel supporting the aesthetic of fur, even the recycled kind, is just plain wrong. 

I have to admit, vintage fur makes me a tad uneasy. Of course, I wear vintage leather, so I’d have to confess to being a full-on second-hand hypocrite.