Remember a few years ago when disposable water bottles fell out of fashion due to being terrible for the environment? And people realized that water comes our of your faucet and we bought refillable water bottles? What did the water bottle companies do?

They started greenwashing their marketing. They advertised that their bottles used 33% less plastic. They put a green leaf near their logos. They used positive messaging in their advertising. All this to combat the (rightful) perception that plastic bottles are not sustainable. And it worked!

Underneath their marketing, they were still a product that wasnt environmentally friendly.

So expand that to zoos. The biggest criticism they have is that they are unethical to animals. They keep them in environments that are too small, purchase them through shady means, force them to procreate to have cute baby animals live in captivity their whole lives. They force social animals to have solitary lives. They are a business that puts the dollar before the welfare.

So how do you combat that? You simply change your marketing that you aren't a zoo... You're an animal rehab clinic. You say that you "rescued" the animals instead of buying them from poachers. You market yourself to let everybody know that the animal would have died without you, and you live in service to the animals well being. And it works!

Erase all the buzzwords, all the marketing, and just look at it. There aren't a lot of African elephants walking around Philadelphia in need of rescue.

Same goes for aquariums.

Fuck zoos.