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submitted 2 years ago by Lafari@lemmy.world to c/vegan@lemmy.world

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Hi, just wondering if fuggs are vegan. As in, do they contain products made from animals?

As far as I can tell, "fuggs" is a portmanteau of "fake" and "uggs", and so fuggs are "fake" uggs, meaning fake ugg boots. Uggs or ugg boots are a kind of boots traditionally made from sheepskin/shearling, and sometimes with suede leather (cow skin) on the outside.

But there's a bit of confusion about what "fuggs" or "fake uggs" means. Unlike something such as "faux fur" or "faux/fake leather", where it's pretty clear that will be vegan and not made from animals like the traditional kind is, "ugg" has some weird brand authenticity thing going on.

I might get some facts wrong here, but from what I could gather, there are 2 companies, called "UGG" (American brand) and "UGG Since 1974" (Australian brand) which both lay some kind of claim to what can be considered an authentic ugg boot. Uggs were first made in Australia, but I think the American UGG brand often sues other companies, including those in Australia, for using the "ugg" name. However in some places ugg simply means the style of shoe rather than the brand.

So unfortunately due to this, I think there might be 2 different meanings of "fuggs" - one I believe indeed means vegan ugg boots which don't use animal skins/products, while the other meaning is simply an ugg boot made in the traditional way from animals but just not by the "official" UGG brand.

In all this confusion, how can we truly answer the question of "Are fuggs vegan?" Is the answer somewhere between "They could be, sometimes." or "No one knows, really." ?

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[-] Lafari@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Setting aside plant-based leather which is definitely more eco friendly than animal leather (and the fact most of the ways in which leather are used are wholly unnecessary to begin with), I don't agree that synthetic leather is worse for the environment. In fact it seems like it's still a lot better than leather products.

A 2017 report entitled "The Pulse of the Fashion Industry" went into some detail on this subject. Real leather is regarded as being much worse for the environment than faux leather, primarily due to the massive water requirements, fossil fuel usage and contribution to the eutrophication of waterways. The report concluded that synthetic leather has less than half the environmental impact of cow leather and rated cow leather as the least environmentally friendly of the commonly used raw materials in the fashion industry.

This video also goes into some of the reasons why animal leather is so damaging to the environment and why not only plant based leather but even synthetic leather is a lot better: https://youtu.be/x-UGgf7i0qM?si=tcnfiT8wVOj4ii4_

All that aside, veganism is about not exploiting animals, and buying leather definitely does that. By supporting leather you're supporting beef. There are even some cattle farmers that raise animals specifically for leather. It's a highly profitable industry and can probably be considered a co-product rather than a byproduct. The ethical thing to do both for animals and the environment is to boycott leather and either avoid any kind if you want to or use plant based or even synthetic leather.

Sorry and I hope we can set this issue to rest since it was not the purpose of my post at all. I'm here to talk about fuggs

this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024

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