Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that refers to the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain doctrine of non-violence and peace.

Statistics reveal that an average person utilizes the skin of 1.5-2 buffalo only for the sake of foot wear. Apart from that pollutants derived from the making of a shoe could include dioxin, volatile organic compounds, solvents, chromium, hide waste effluent, and isocyanates.

Life begins in the slaughterhouse

It is true that the life of all leather products begin in the slaughter house. Every year, the global leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans their skins and hides. Even exotic animals like alligators are plucked from their habitat and factory-farmed for their skins.

Our soccer shoes come from kangaroo skin. Kid goats may be boiled alive to make gloves and the skins of unborn calves and lambs-some purposely aborted, others from slaughtered pregnant cows and ewes-are considered especially "luxurious."

An estimated 2 million dogs and cats are killed in China to meet the demand for their skin.

Ahimsa Silk

In the Ahimsa product category silk is manufactured, unlike in the traditional process, without killing large numbers of silkworms. Silk made by this method is termed as Ahimsa Silk. In India, Ahimsa Silk is produced in many parts, including Benares, Jharkhand, Murshidabad, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The process of silk-culture or sericulture is one in which silk is harvested by boiling the pupae, thereby killing them to obtain their cocoons that are filled with silk. For instance, 1 gram of silk is produced by killing nearly 15 silkworms and 1,500 silkworms are sacrificed for a mere metre of silk cloth. While silk is produced by many insects, such as bees, ants, wasps and spiders, textile silk can only be manufactured from the silk of moth caterpillars.

Under sericulture, silk moths are made to lay eggs on specially prepared paper. The eggs hatch to produce caterpillars who are fed fresh mulberry leaves for nourishment. After a period of 35 days and some four moltings, the silkworms turn 10,000 times heavier due to their active spinning of the cocoon. Straw frames are placed over the trays of silkworms to prevent them from moving, as the spinning requires the worms to move their heads inside the cocoon. Liquid silk produced in the silkworms' glands is forced through spinnerets. This liquid silk is then coated with sericin, a water-soluble gum that solidifies when in contact with air. In one or two days, a silkworm easily spin a mile's length of filament, all of which is encased within the cocoon.

At the end of this process, the silkworm metamorphoses into a moth, but is usually killed using heat before it turns into a moth. Moths are cultivated separately for breeding more silkworms. About seven days before maturity, the cocoons are collected and put into heat chambers with temperatures varying between 70°C and 90°C for about four hours. The worm is killed and the cocoon filled with silk is collected for spinning. To manufacture a five-yard, hand-woven silk sari, for instance, you would need to boil about 50,000 silkworms.