Peta and the SAC: an unlikely alliance

NEW YORK – Animal rights group Peta is using flawed data provided the Sustainable Apparel Coalition as justification for attempting to destroy Peru’s alpaca industry. In correspondence with Apparel Insider, Peta cited alpaca’s extremely poor environmental rating on the Higg MSI which sees alpaca fibre rated as six times worse for the environment than petroleum-derived polyester.

“Alpaca is the second most environmentally damaging textile,” Peta told us. “Alpaca fleece is six times more environmentally destructive than polyester,” Peta told us.

The problem with this data is that SAC extrapolates information from the LCA information on sheep wool for the production of alpaca fibre. “[These are] two different fibers,” an industry insider from Peru told us. “While alpaca is thin and light, sheep’s wool is a hollow fibre.”