He added: “We should eat less meat, all of us, and we should use less leather. That’s reality. We all know that cattle and beef are among the biggest contributors to carbon emissions.”
Zeitz is already one of Meat Free Monday’s highest-profile supporters in the business community, describing it as “positive, easy fun campaign to support”. He has introduced MFM to Puma’s office canteens, giving 9,000 employees the chance to join in.
Last year Puma’s “environmental profit and loss account” revealed that the production and processing of raw materials – particularly the leather used to create footwear – costs the company most in environmental terms.
“Maybe there’s an economic way of producing a leather-like product in the laboratory,” Zeitz told the newspaper. “We have to find alternative ways of producing our raw materials without asking nature to do it for us.”