New Balance Phasing Out Kangaroo Leather, Following Nike and Puma
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New Balance is the latest athletic company to ditch kangaroo leather.
On Thursday, the Boston-based shoe brand committed to quit the exotic skin, just months after Nike and Puma‘s announcements to do so. That leaves Adidas as the sole outlier among the world’s biggest athletic footwear makers. Kangaroo leather is commonly used to make soccer cleats.
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New Balance told the Center for a Humane Economy, a Washington, D.C.-based animal welfare organization, that it will phase out the use of kangaroo hides and stop selling shoes made with them by December, 2024. The organization launched a “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign three years ago to pressure big athletic shoe brands to abandon the animal-derived material.
According to the Center, several athletic brands, including Japan’s Mizuno, are still using kangaroo leather. Men’s luxury dress shoe brands in Europe also sell k-leather products. Diadora pledged to abandon k-leather back in 2019, according to the organization.
“New Balance deserves our praise for pledging to disassociate itself from the wildlife-skin trade,” Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action, said. “The two biggest athletic shoe sellers based in the United States have announced in 2023 that they will rapidly phase out sourcing kangaroo skins for soccer shoes, and there’s no question that the decisions will diminish the financing for the largest commercial massacres of kangaroos in their native habitats in Australia.”
This summer, U.S. Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at banning the U.S. sale of kangaroo products. America, China and the EU are among the largest markets for soccer cleats. A federal kangaroo products ban proposed in 2021 didn’t move forward.
Several states have taken matters into their own hands—California banned the sale of kangaroo products in 1971, and a similar bill was introduced in the Oregon Legislature earlier this year. “It’s unconscionable that millions of native wild animals in Australia have been killed for the sake of high-end soccer cleats worn by a subset of elite soccer players,” the bill’s author, Democratic Oregon State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, said in January.
“I understand this legislation may have financial impact on some Oregon shoe manufacturers, but in the balance Oregon should be standing on the humane side of this issue. There are other materials that can be used in making these high-end cleats,” he added. Less than two months later, on March 14, Nike said it would stop selling kangaroo shoes by the end of the year.
Alongside Animal Wellness Action, the Center for a Humane Economy has pushed for similar legislation in Arizona, Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont. Together they’ve helped develop several lawsuits over the past two years in California against sports retailers that they claim continued to sell k-leather cleats in violation of state law.
Australian government officials and conservationists have debated whether the commercial kangaroo industry serves the national ecology and economy. The Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia said kangaroo populations are “constantly monitored and managed by state and territory governments to ensure their survival and preserve the biodiversity of the land.” For species like large red and grey kangaroos, “the commercial industry has emerged as the responsible alternative to conservation culling to keep numbers sustainable and ensure no meat or skins end up in landfill.”
The Center for a Humane economy said more than 1 million kangaroos are slaughtered for commercial use each year in Australia, orphaning 300,000. Hunting guidelines are “deficient and impossible to enforce in the Outback,” it said.
Emma Hurst, a member of Parliament in New South Wales, said she applauded New Balance’s move to discontinue sourcing kangaroo leather. “The demand for kangaroo leather is driving the commercial slaughter of kangaroos across Australia,” she said. “New Balance is now among other major brands like Nike who are turning away from the unnecessary trade in wild native animals.” Hurst, along with Georgie Purcell, a member of Parliament in Victoria, lobbied U.S. lawmakers this week in support of the House bill.
