Opinion: Here’s an (absolutely painless) way to ditch your fur-trimmed winter parka

If you’re one of those people who paid good money to purchase a “cool” fur-trimmed parka, but are now watching those disturbing videos of helpless coyotes in steel-jaw traps being shot in cold blood on your Facebook timeline and rethinking your life choices, I have a solution for you.

Toronto-based Wully Outerwear has gone all Godfather on us and has an offer you just can’t refuse. It will trade in your fur-trim parka and you get $300 CAD ($225 USD) off a Wully Outerwear parka. In turn, all jackets collected will be distributed by charities to homeless and at risk individuals in need.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved! Ok, maybe not the companies still insisting on selling fur-lined jackets, but everyone else… you, the animals, people in need who could use a warm coat, and Wully Outerwear’s owners who were smart enough to capitalize on a smart and kind idea.

www.wullyouterwear.ca

You get to do the humane thing without penalizing your pocket. I mean, let’s face it…. If you forked over $300-400 for a fur coat and have suddenly come face-to-face with the realization that using an animal’s fur as an accessory or a way to stay warm in a world where a million other high-tech options exist, but simply don’t have that kind of money to throw away to get another one (few do), there’s a solution staring you in the face.

There is absolutely no good reason to wear fur in 2016. None! In a world of high-tech eco-friendly options that offer amazing insulation for all kinds of winter weather (here are just a few), we need to do better.

I mean, what in the world is so cool and edgy about walking around with a dead animal’s pelt around your neck? You’re not a damn coureur des bois canoeing down the St. Lawrence in 1678 transporting your beaver pelts, in desperate need of protection against the harsh Canadian elements while on your way to Green Bay.

You’re a millennial standing in line at a coffee shop waiting for the tattooed barista to hand you your overpriced latte so you can head to your toasty cubicle at a marketing agency and come up with a million different ways to sell yoga pants and fruit smoothies. You probably won’t even see snow and sleet again that day until it’s time to head home.

Leonardo di Caprio may have needed that insulation in The Revenant while chasing after Tom Hardy to exact his revenge (and after all… that bear did try to kill him), but your time in the unforgiving winter elements follows a different script.

And I really don’t want to hear the fur proponents yapping on about how it’s a “natural and renewable resource”. You’re killing an animal and taking its pelt for your non-essential, vanity-based need to attach a lustrous fur lapel to a coat because you think it looks cool. No, it doesn’t. It looks like you’re totally ok with someone torturing, skinning, and killing an animal so they can slap parts of it on a coat that you get to wear on your way to Sunday brunch in the Mile End.

The fur industry is an incredibly cruel industry. We’re talking electrocuting animals anally and genitally, skinning them alive, cramming them in cages, trapping them in steel-jaw traps… Even if you’re not a vegetarian or vegan; even if you’re just some ordinary non-militant schmuck who wants to do better and is reducing your consumption of meat and making sure you purchase cruelty-free products, knowing the facts about the fur industry is enough to want to disassociate from such cruelty done in the name of fashion.

Wully Outwear jackets are Canadian, gorgeous and cruelty-free, and by giving you the option to trade in your fur trim parkas, they’re making it painless to do the right thing.

This is a great offer and it won’t be around for long, so people should take advantage of it while they can. All the details are here.