A couple of months ago I managed to convince a new friend to go vegan and I was 4y vegan at the time. A couple weeks in they asked me a question out of the blue “hey are pens vegan” and my first thought was well I suppose they could maybe be tested on animals, after all you don’t want an ink that would hurt you if you get it on your skin, but what I found was even more disturbing, inks and dyes of many colours can come from various animal sources from crushed insects (cochineal) to bone char in black ink https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ and from weirder sources like snails octopi and cow urine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye
Little did I know at the time this would send me down a rabbit hole where I soon learned one by one that papers and cardboard (including toilet paper) use animal flesh as a binding agent https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/ https://veganoga.com/is-paper-vegan/ https://www.perfectpapercompany.co.uk/blogs/news/vegan-papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizing that inks and dyes of all kinds not just pens but printers tattoos ink and hair dyes can contain animal products
So at this point I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, I had this suspicion that due to the relatively niche nature of this information are the vegan certifying orgs even checking product packaging? So I contacted the vegan society by email: " A product’s packaging does fall out of the scope of the Vegan Trademark’s standards as there are very few verified options that are widely available. We would however question and potentially reject a registration that goes on to use packaging which is directly sourced from animals." huh? the vegan society probably one of the most outspoken advocates of the rights of vegans is essentially misleading vegans into buying things they think are free from animal products but in reality due to the prevalence of animal based inks papers and glues many vegans may be unwittingly buying animal products that have the Vegan Society stamp of approval, so I tried the vegetarian society: “Our vegetarian and vegan trademark criteria look exclusively at a product’s consumable/usable ingredients and their suitability for vegetarians and vegans. They do not extend to a product’s packaging.” then I tried v-label and their response is written out in full in the attached image, if anyone would like the full email transcripts I will post my contact at the end.
Now I’m feeling sad that society has reduced animals lives to worth less than the printing on a box of packaging or literally less than toilet paper we wipe our ass with, I’m feeling angry at the psychopaths that made these manufacturing decisions to save a couple cents on some random box or spaghetti, and I feel betrayed by the vegan society who up until this point I really looked up to as a relentless advocate for animals.
But wait a minute, did I just say glue? Isn’t glue in basically everything? If I want to buy a new hairbrush how do I know its using vegan glue? I suppose I could email the companies, so that’s what I started doing, to this date I have emailed, phoned or otherwise contacted over 100 companies trying to get to the bottom of animal product use thus far seemingly largely ignored by vegans, because that’s the other thing, if you search for posts relating to ie vegan toilet paper or where to find information about vegan packaging there is shockingly little information about this online which is part of why I’m making this post to collate my findings.
So I start emailing these companies one of the first companies I contact is Huel who respond positively they say yes our packaging is vegan we are a 100% vegan product. I continue to contact many companies most of whom either ghost or refuse to investigate saying boilerplate responses like “we don’t have the certification/we can’t confirm with our supply chain/customer service doesn’t have that information” but I do get some early postive responses from Greggs, BarryM, Seagate, Warburtons, Oatly, littlesoapcompany.co.uk, LUSH, Linda McCartney, and to this day that is the exhaustive list of companies that have verbally guaranteed the vegan status of their entire product line’s packaging (Please note time of writing is 2024 this information may be outdated if you are reading in later years), other companies were able to provide a guarantee for specific products when they asked me to specify a product.
In one case I escalated to phoning the physical head office of a grocery story company I think it was ALDI (UK) and they advised me to restate my question to customer services but give them an exact product, and I’m like what you expect me to give you a list of your own products when you know I’m asking about everything, 90% of ALDI’s products are owned by the company but it turns out their manufacturing is actually contracted to many smaller companies to whom ALDI would have to contact individually to find out about the packaging material. OK fair enough, so I continue to phone ALDI customer service until they eventually say “if it says vegan on the product then the packaging is vegan too” that remains to date my biggest win.
At some point during this process I also learned that plastics contain stearic acid as a slip agent which can be derived from vegetable fats but is instead often derived from “tallow” (flesh) https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ or as a plasticity agent like this one used in PVC https://bisleyinternational.com/how-is-calcium-stearate-used-in-pvc/ (honestly theres so many plastic additives it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more derived from animals)
I would soon learn from correspondence with PZ Cussons and their brand Carex - an ostensibly vegan friendly brand when you look at the sheer number of their soap products certified by the vegan society - that the process of using tallow in plastic packaging production is “common unfortunately, throughout the industry” for a diverse range of plastics PP, PE and MDO.
So I continued getting red-pilled, I learned tyres can be non vegan for the same reason, wallpaper, wood veneer, ceramics (they can use bones https://www.ethicalglobe.com/blog/what-is-vegan-pottery) and then I started bringing it up to online vegan friends and I was surprised to learn that few if any were aware of this, which is why I’ve taken to borrowing Humane Hancock’s term “Vegan Blindspot” (originally in reference to the problem of wild suffering)
My goal’s for this post are 3
- Raise awareness to the utterly entrenched nature of animal products in our society (how many times have vegans unwittingly commodified animal flesh by using plastics or glues or paper?)
- Encourage vegans to follow me in contacting customer support teams to demand action so that the notion of non vegan toilet paper etc can be a thing of the past and to that end:
- Begin a conversation about how best to share our findings (perhaps ultimately in pursuit of a community operated database split by world regions), I have contacted doublecheckvegan and plantbasednews with this information and offers to provide my email records neither have replied
I don’t use lemmy very often in fact I made this account just to post this but I will check in to the state of this post for a while and if I don’t respond here I will create a simplex address you can contact me through (simplex is the most private secure and anonymous open source messenger that I’m aware of better than briar and cwtch and session and matrix)
I will end by posting the only FAQ page I have ever seen confirming the vegan status of a product lines packaging as well as product: https://support.whogivesacrap.org/hc/en-au/articles/11902182808217-Are-your-products-vegan
edit: related cool and good news: the first cardboard packaging company to be officially certified by the vegan society https://www.smurfitkappa.com/uk/products-and-services/packaging/vegan-certified-packaging the first book to be certified by the vegan society ie that the paper adhesives and inks are vegan: https://www.vegansociety.com/news/news/vegan-trademark-registers-book-materials-world-first
edit 2: idea for a preliminary community vegan product status database: member submitted posts on a moderated simplex room containing a list of what they’ve found to be vegan so far and then an attached zip file for email proof or whatever other proof
edit 3: useful list of items and materials that may not be vegan including items I didn’t talk about above: Reference: plastic is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ ; https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ ; https://bisleyinternational.com/how-is-calcium-stearate-used-in-pvc/ paper is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/ inks/dyes are not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye glues are not always vegan https://bitesizevegan.org/is-glue-made-from-horses-vegan-glue/ Ceramics/Pottery are not always vegan: https://www.oxfordclay.co.uk/blog-1/blog-post-title-one-2ess6 Tyres are not always vegan: https://veganfoundry.com/are-tyres-vegan/ Various arts and crafts tools are not always vegan like pens pencils brushes paints crayons chalk https://chompthis.com/ingredient/?id=773 https://doublecheckvegan.com/vegan-art-supplies/#veganchalk Makeup brushes are not always vegan: https://ethicalelephant.com/vegan-makeup-brushes/ Shaving brushes and razors are not always vegan: https://vegan.com/beauty/shaving/
Household Products
https://doublecheckvegan.com/guide-to-vegan-household-products/
Art Supplies
https://www.artsupplies.co.uk/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-vegan-art-supplies-for-conscious-creatives
Musical Instruments
Comment thread for email templates
Online Shopping Template (Includes reference to packing/shipping materials)
My name is <NAME>, I’m vegan
I would like to inquire if your products, their packaging or online-order shipping/packing materials or any miscellaneous additional accessories or materials shipped with the product such as brochures and leaflets contain any animal product derived plastic/paper/cardboard/glues/inks or any animal-product processing aids for such materials as it has recently come to my attention that plastic, paper/cardboard, glues and inks of all kinds can contain bone char, shellac, gelatine, carmine, animal glycerin and other animal derived substances, as an ethical vegan I will highly recommend your products if you can provide this guarantee
Reference: plastic is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ ; https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ ; https://bisleyinternational.com/how-is-calcium-stearate-used-in-pvc/ paper is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/ inks/dyes are not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye glues are not always vegan https://bitesizevegan.org/is-glue-made-from-horses-vegan-glue/
Template to consider if the product is certified by the vegan society (I have email screenshots for vegetarian society and v-label too if you need them just dont forget to switch out reference to Vegan Society in the the template)
My name is <NAME>, I’m vegan
I would like to inquire if your products packaging contains any animal product derived plastic/paper/cardboard/glues/inks or any animal-product processing aids for such materials as it has recently come to my attention that plastic, paper/cardboard, glues and inks of all kinds can contain bone char, shellac, gelatine, carmine, animal glycerin and other animal derived substances, as an ethical vegan I will highly recommend your product if you can provide this guarantee
I am also aware that several of your products are certified by the Vegan Society, as it happens the Vegan Society do not check product packaging during their audits (Email screenshot attached) so I am asking you directly.
Reference: plastic is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ ; https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ paper is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/ inks are not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ glues are not always vegan https://bitesizevegan.org/is-glue-made-from-horses-vegan-glue/
Clothes Template (Specifies the clothes tag is not enough info)
My name is <NAME>, I’m vegan
I would like to inquire if your products or their packaging contain any animal product derived plastic/paper/cardboard/glues/inks or any animal-product processing aids for such materials as it has recently come to my attention that plastic, paper/cardboard, glues and inks of all kinds can contain bone char, shellac, gelatine, carmine, animal glycerin and other animal derived substances, as an ethical vegan I will highly recommend your product if you can provide this guarantee
I am aware I can read the clothes label to determine fiber content, but this does not tell me the vegan status of any dyes used in the clothes or whether the plastic fibers contain animal product derived manufacturing agents/additives
Reference: dyes are not always vegan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye ; https://www.littlegreenbasket.co.uk/blogs/buying-guides/the-9-hidden-animal-products-in-your-clothes glues are not always vegan https://bitesizevegan.org/is-glue-made-from-horses-vegan-glue/ inks are not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ plastic is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ ; https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ ; https://bisleyinternational.com/how-is-calcium-stearate-used-in-pvc/ paper is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/
Default Template
My name is <NAME>, I’m vegan
I would like to inquire if your products packaging contains any animal product derived plastic/paper/cardboard/glues/inks or any animal-product processing aids for such materials as it has recently come to my attention that plastic, paper/cardboard, glues and inks of all kinds can contain bone char, shellac, gelatine, carmine, animal glycerin and other animal derived substances, as an ethical vegan I will highly recommend your product if you can provide this guarantee
Reference: plastic is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-plastic-vegan/ ; https://www.pishrochem.com/blog/en/stearic-acid-and-the-plastic-industry/ ; https://bisleyinternational.com/how-is-calcium-stearate-used-in-pvc/ paper is not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-paper-vegan/ inks/dyes are not always vegan https://veganfoundry.com/is-ink-vegan/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye glues are not always vegan https://bitesizevegan.org/is-glue-made-from-horses-vegan-glue/
Thank you for this detailed post. The use of animal products goes deeper in than I previously thought. I should ask vegan supply if their packaging material is free of animal derived glue and inks.
The toilet paper thing is further pushing me to consider installing a bidet as a lot of canadian boreal forest is also cut down to wipe america’s butt.
Thank you for your shared concern, don’t forget about plastics and paper/cardboard also likely present in most packaging solutions, I have email templates if that would make things easier I’ll post them in a comment
Please do share the email templates, it would help others to do the same.
boop theyre up now in a comment thread
Thank you once again 🫡
Great post! Thanks for sharing your findings and creating greater awareness! I think I’ll contact tofurkey, Gardein and follow your heart Monday as they’re my most used vegan products.
Thank you I’ve been feeling pretty bad about this lately I lost my good hairbrush, I need a new bath towel and I only just managed to find vegan packaging for hair products but its at LUSH which is expensive, I’m willing to sacrifice none of these things justify killing animals but I need a little bit of hope that my actions are making a difference
Sharing this information makes makes all the difference. Kinda why I kept asking you to make a blog post 😁
Idk what the conversation rate from burger bucks for your country is but you know how to contact me if you need help getting a brush you’ll use.
Thanks again 🐇
Conversion rate for what kind of prices?
Money in your country?
oh I completely missed the end of the sentence you were talking about buying a hairbrush im so dumb
Tbf I actually sent it without the last part. You’re not dumb you shared all of this with us 😁
Yeah I was aware of a lot but not of all this. Good work.
Glue in shoes for example is a really big one.
I do think that there points where we need to be realistic about how much influence we can really wield as ~2% of the population atm. There are a lot of rabbit holes of horror. Templates emails, if you can pastebin them or something and link that if you have them, and a campaign to mail companies to show interest is a good idea.
We should probably try focus effort though? Like to influence the supply chain 2 or 3 degrees back from the end buyer you kinda need an industry titan to push for it. Suggestions?
Here’s what Carex (PZ Cussons) said, based on their tone I at one point considered working out a campaign with them just because PZ Cussons is so big, in other responses I’ve asked companies to include the information on their FAQ pages one, estrid said they would do it when they find out more information they werent able to confirm their plastic was vegan or something, in another case in contacting Razer about their mice after a round of emails they were very transparent in their manufacturing materials breakdown but there wasnt enough information in the end they said they admired my dedication and my concerns were valid and that they would table it at the weekly meeting, I guess its been a week since then I wonder how it went,
Anyway, heres what Carex said in full I almost forgot the point of the comment, I ultimately decided against it because I didnt think it would be a realistic thing to ask and that I should stick to emailing individual companies but if you have more ideas and advice I’m still open to the idea, heres what they said
Dear <NAME>,
Thank you for contacting PZ Cussons Customer Services regarding whether Carex packaging is vegan.
We do not intentionally add animal ingredients to any of our Carex products during the manufacturing process, and all our formulations are certified vegan by The Vegan Society. Meaning, they are free from animal ingredients. We are also a partner of PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies Programme, meaning that all our PZ Cussons personal care and beauty brands are certified as free from animal testing.
However, during the production process of plastic packaging, including PP, PE AND MDO, tallow is used as a processing agent, therefore we are not able to assure you that the packaging used for Carex is free of animal ingredients. This is a common occurrence, unfortunately, throughout the plastic packaging industry.
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Should you have any further questions or comments in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us again.
Yours sincerely,
Audrey
PZ Cussons Customer Services Team
I agree with this. I am a musician and a lot of instruments contain animal parts, for example a lot of violin bows are made of horse hair, some guitar parts can be made of beeswax or shellac, and a ton of older pianos (in)famously had keys made of ivory (though this was banned in the 1980s I believe.) I already owned most of my musical instruments pre-veganism and also trying to find the source of every part in every musical instrument as a multi-instrumentalist seems really tricky and I’ve never actually been able to find any sources on which companies use non-vegan parts. The only example I’m aware of is Martin using non-vegan glue but I use Fender guitars, not Martins.
If on the off chance anyone knows of any instrument manufacturers that are definitely not vegan I’d love to know so that I can avoid them. I use my music for activism and it’s an extremely important part of my life.
Is there no good web results for “Vegan instruments in <your country>” or “Vegan <specified instrument> in <your country>” sometimes but not always theres specialist online stores for example if you search “Vegan wallpaper UK” there is at least one website you can buy vegan wallpaper from
Yeah, all I could really find were some results from r/vegan discussing non-vegan instruments but giving very few actual examples (average r/vegan moment lol), a news article about an Irish company making a vegan friendly violin model (which I am admittedly somewhat intrigued by, the only reason I refuse to play violin is because horse hair being used in the bows puts me off), and the general vague stuff about some companies using non-vegan glue etc in guitar.
As I sort of scanned over in my original comment I did some digging a while back and found out that Fender guitars are definitely 100% free of animal components, which was my main issue since I exclusively use Fenders and the guitar is my main instrument. I was considering getting a Martin acoustic a while ago but found out that they use non-vegan glue so I didn’t bother.
Mini update: Did a little more digging, Ludwig Drums appear to be vegan.
Thank you, if you could edit the comments to include your source that would be really helpful for ppl, otherwise see my longer response :)
I’ve started another post about this topic that I’m adding to as I go along
ah alright I’ll have a look, I just hope the information from yourself and others doesnt become too disorganised and hard to find
I’m really happy for you could you post a source for the fender guitars being vegan, fediverse content shwos up in web search results so youd make it more accessible, maybe we can start a thread listing all known vegan instruments
Yeah, for sure! Would be happy to help put together a spreadsheet of this kind of thing, I am on the spectrum so lists and sheets are sort of my specialty lol
what would you suggest as an open source tool for that, I would like to try and work something out on simplex because theyre one of only 2 open source social media sites I know of to have post quantum encryption which if you didnt know quantum computers can provably break most encryption its just a matter of time before they have enough qubits, but due to the method called harvest now decrypt later corpos and govts are hoovering up encrypted data en masse thinking “itll be super cheap to decrypt all this before we know it” and then they can use AI systems to filter through it all and build personalised surveillance profiles like they already do, except it will be on data people thought was private forever
There’s a lot to take in here and a lot of useful information and resources. Thank you for taking the time not just to contact these companies but also the effort in sharing that information here. It is much appreciated.
Huel is an interesting one. Full disclosure it’s been several years since I was buying their products but at the time the packaging and shipping materials seemed pretty “standard” to me. It could be that the alternatives are unassuming to the untrained eye and I missed it. Or- maybe they don’t know as much about their supplies as they say, or maybe they’re an outlier that has actually researched all this independently. It’s also possible their methods have changed significantly since I was buying it.
It’s so hard to know what can be trusted unless it comes from your own household that I’ve given up on most outside sources.
So in the case of vegetable inks they look exactly the same I think, and stearic acid for plastiic you can get the exact same molecule from vegetable fats so the plastic will literally be exactly the same
I think a status database would be quite cool and helpful. I have just received positive feedback by Wild Cosmetics. It would be nice to have a place where we can collect and reference such feedback as a community
I’m so happy to hear that! (ive never heard of wild cosmetics maybe theyre not in the UK) but yeah I might want to try hosting like zip files we can keep updated in a SimpleX community we can have one room read only where the latest zip files are uploaded and a sister room linked together where anyone can post. SimpleX is important for vegans so we can support eachother in direct action by affording other activists the cover of what is imo the gold standard of private messaging (post quantum encryption and metadata privacy and no unique user ids) even if we don’t take spicy actions ourselves
Thank you so much for sharing. You’ve already done so much work we can build upon. I have just messaged dm, which might be a relevant retail company for all kinds of cosmetic and hygiene products for those of us living in central and eastern Europe.
Thank you so much, if this comment thread represents a good portion of the vegans in the world asking about these materials (plastc paper cardboard inks dyes glues ceramics) then we can’t let up, my initial hope is that this will become a frequently asked question for companies and then at least they might mention it on a FAQ page
Just added these sources about paper sizing to the post https://www.perfectpapercompany.co.uk/blogs/news/vegan-papers Surface sizing solutions consist of mainly modified starches and sometimes other hydrocolloids, such as gelatine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizing
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Thank you for this and this thread. I didn’t mean to be hostile to your or your chat room in another thread and I am sorry.
@ambiguous_yelp@vegantheoryclub.org, would you be ok if I pinned this post? It has lots of really useful information and I would love for new people coming to this community to see it. Thank you for all the work you have done here :)
I would love if you pinned this post!
It should be pinned now!
Thank you very much I hope to raise awareness and put more pressure on companies
Also, I should mention here so this can be collated among other vegan products that may be mentioned in this thread.
This is the toilet paper/paper towels I get (specifically because they were the only vegan ones I could find). They use recycled paper (or bamboo), ‘soy-based inks’, and their glue is ‘just starch and water’. There’s also no animal testing aside from consensual human testing apparently lol.
https://support.whogivesacrap.org/hc/en-au/articles/11902182808217-Are-your-products-vegan
I’m not sure if you can get these from anywhere that isn’t Australia, but it’s good for Aussies I guess.
Edit: link to who gives a crap’s site
Yeah I put this at the end notes of the post :) I get them too from uk they ship to a few countries
Oh wow, can’t believe I didn’t notice that link haha. Glad to hear they ship overseas :)
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I don’t know who needs to hear this but if an item at ALDI (UK) says vegetarian or nothing on the packaging check groceries.aldi.co.uk it often says “vegan,vegetarian” under the lifestyle section of the product listing, beats me why they have no issue printing “vegetarian” on products but “vegan” no thats too far even though it would be a more accurate label
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