Zest-It is not vegan-friendly. Although the owner first stated so, which led me to buying pencil solvent products, after further questions, it is not so. My product questions were: whether cruelty-free was included in vegan-friendly and whether the applied solvent changes the lightfastness and waterproofness of the used coloured pencils. First of all, what company and person does not like to hear back from a customer that they like the product and have additional questions to the product, for which there is no information on the company’s website? Apparently Zest-It does. The final response was that I should not contact them again and that my questions were not relevant to the company and their products.
I always offer the statement “we are generally/momentarily not interested in the vegan art sector” in my inquiry to use for them. Companies can just copy this sentence, and all is well. It is not the first time I stumbled upon such a rude, grumpy, immature human being (Rohrer&Klingner incident), but it is always sad to learn about the people behind a brand, being such crude individuals. Many have a problem with the word “vegan”. I mean, the alarm bells are ringing. Many do not reply at all, others react aggressive. They stigmatize veganism. They see it as something negative and bad.
I also communicated with a couple of companies, which offer vegan-friendly products and are cruelty-free, but they did not want to be mentioned on my list, because of how the world overall sees veganism. Generally you should be happy and proud, that as a company you offer vegan-friendly products and that no animal was tortured for it, right?
Are they annoyed by “fake, pretentious- in your face- vegans” seeking public attention with this stunt and “lecturing-all people they meet- vegans” and just apply that image to all of us?
Do they see us all as violent animal rights activists, who don’t shy away from physical aggression? Nobody really learns from history, do they? (Of course they don’t, they keep doing it over and over again, until there is nothing left from this planet). Does anybody remember suffragettes? Not all of them were throwing stones and burning down places. Not all vegans and people who stand for a correct treatment of animals are like that. Most of us are not, but they lump us together with the smallest fraction that consists of those kind of people. Another possibility is, especially for art materials, that companies think, they have to hide being cruelty-free, because people want to buy safe products that have been tested to the utmost including animal testing, because “only” through that you truly know if it is safe to use.
People have to stop frowning upon veganism and vegans. It is not a crime. Respecting and protecting other species, not only the human kind, is the opposite of a crime. This planet and all its inhabitants matter to us. When has it become a bad thing to care? Have industrial progress and materialism pushed caring about others faraway and dictated for it to be shunned?
I hope companies change their view on veganism and more will start to label vegan-friendly products on their websites.
I found this labeling only with Colors of Nature (all-vegan company) https://www.colorsofnature.com and Derwent started to label new products https://www.derwentart.com/en/gb/7797/procolour-pencils .
Source: Mail contact
Since last year’s solvent search flop 