After Puma, Nike and New Balance stopped using kangaroo leather, Adidas and Asics have now communicated that 2025 will be the final year the material will be used in the production of football cleats.
On Sept. 20, 2024, the US Senate approved a proposal to ban the use of kangaroo leather in the US. The state of California had already banned the sale of products made from kangaroo leather.
The main issue in the trade of kangaroo leather is the way the animals are hunted, the organization called Center for a Humane Economy said. The marsupials are mass-hunted (millions every year) both for their skin and their meat during the nighttime. Often, no effort is made to avoid shooting mother kangaroos with joeys (baby kangaroos) still in their pouches. This results in large numbers of orphaned joeys, and this type of hunting has been going on for decades.
But finally, there may be at least fewer killings in the sports industry, as five of the biggest shoe manufacturers have stopped buying kangaroo leather this year.
Kangaroo leather, or K-leather, which has been the name because of the issues around the use of this type of leather, seems to be in the final stages of the sports footwear business. Brands including Puma, Nike and New Balance announced in 2023 that they’d be discontinuing the use of k-leather in their footwear. However, other brands including Adidas, Asics and Mizuno still use the controversial material, according to Pacelle’s organization, which tracks brands using kangaroo skin.
Now, Adidas has made clear when the company will end using kangaroo leather in its football shoes, including the popular Copa model, although the latest Copa is produced from calf leather instead of kangaroo. Adidas said it will end the use of the leather type “during 2025” last week. Just days after this announcement, Asics communicated through its sustainability department in an email to Animal Wellness and the Center for a Humane Economy, stating: “We would like to share with you that, as we have successfully developed high-performance alternatives to kangaroo leather, we are moving toward ending the production of products using kangaroo leather by the end of 2025.”
SGI Europe contacted Adidas to hear how they view the use of kangaroo leather and wanted to know how they will replace it. Spokesperson Stefan Pursche gave this answer:
“This is what we can say,” Pursche said. “We stopped buying kangaroo leather in 2024 and will end production within 2025. The share of kangaroo leather has been declining over the last couple of years and is currently less than 0.1 percent of our footwear upper materials usage. Thanks to our innovation efforts, we were able to replace the material completely by using bovine leather going forward without compromising performance at all.”
Bovine leather is leather from adult cows, and is known for its robust strength, often used in belts, bags and shoes.
