From theguardian.com
Vegan leathers are complicated by questions of commercial viability and sustainability. How do they compare to traditional leather?
In sustainable fashion, breathless promises about vegan leather have arrived thick and fast for over a decade. Innovations promise mushroom and cactus alternatives that look and feel like real leather – minus the negative associations with methane, deforestation, chemical pollution and animal welfare.
While these next-gen materials have absorbed billions of dollars in capital under an environmental banner, experts are concerned they remain a shiny distraction while the fashion industry’s emissions and reliance on fossil fuel-derived materials grows.
“Apple leather, orange leather, pineapple leather, fruit salad leather. It’s like, seriously do we really have to call it leather?” the founder of Nature Matters, Dr Helen Crowley, says. She spent a decade leading nature and sustainable sourcing for the luxury conglomerate Kering. “I haven’t yet seen an alternative leather become an alternative, I’ve seen it just added to the portfolio. It’s about more variety and more stories to sell more stuff.”
According to Textile Exchange, global production of raw hides used in traditional leather – a co-product of the meat industry – has increased steadily over the last two decades from 10.5m tonnes in 2005 to 13.8m tonnes in 2024. It’s evidence that despite the time and money spent on new materials, and endless campaigns by animal rights activists, alternatives to leather have failed to slow growth in demand for real leather.
Approximately half of all leather is used in footwear, 5 to 10% goes into apparel, 10 to 15% in home textiles, and the remainder is spread across other applications like leather goods (bags, wallets) and the automotive industry.
Advancements in vegan leathers are complicated by the commercial viability of new materials and questions about whether or not they are actually better for the environment, since most rely on some amount of plastic. For those wanting a hide-free wardrobe, here’s what to know about alternative leathers.
Difficulty bringing alternatives to market
In the last few years, three of the most prominent leather alternatives have stopped being produced: Mylo which was made by Bolt Threads from mushroom mycelium, Piñatex which was made by Ananas Anam from pineapple leaves, and Mirum which was made by Natural Fiber Welding (NFW) from cork. A fourth, MycoWorks, who makes a lab grown mushroom leather called Reishi, narrowly escaped insolvency last year.
Investors have poured over $1bn into these companies, but even such huge sums couldn’t help them overcome the barriers that continue to plague material innovators: price parity, brand adoption beyond capsule collections, questions over performance and reliance on binders and coatings made using fossil fuels.
To this end, shoes, bags and wallets made from plant-based and lab grown materials are rare. Guardian Australia contacted over a dozen innovators producing plant based or lab grown leathers, and only four – Desserto which uses cacti, Innovera from Modern Meadow which uses plant-based proteins, Nutico which uses cocoa and walnut waste, and Pliant which is made from bio-based rubber – could point us to products currently available to buy.
Where the innovation stands
Alternative leathers generally fall into four categories: plastic, plant-plastic hybrids, bio-based and lab-grown.
Most vegan leather products that can be bought today fall into the first category: plastic. They are made from polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) i.e. pleather. These are derived from fossil fuels, shed microplastic into the environment, cannot be repaired as effectively as real leather, smell and will hang around polluting landfill and the ocean.
Many plant-derived alternatives consist of a vegetable-textile-plastic sandwich. These include materials like Desserto, Innovera and Nutico; Banofi which is made from unspecified plant fibres; and Grapeskin by Vegea which is made from wine waste. The amount of plastic varies in each material with some containing as little as 2% and others as much as 50%. Some use bioplastic derived from renewable resources. While many use food or agricultural waste, for those that don’t, effects associated with industrial farming for growing plant feedstocks, such as land use, fertilisers and pesticides, need to be considered. How these wear over time varies, but plastic coatings generally crack and flake when bent and subjected to friction.
Then there are more advanced, plastic-free alternatives including Reishi from Mycoworks made from fungi, Alt-leather which also uses unspecified plant matter, TomTex which uses chitosan from mushrooms and shrimp shells, and Ephea which is made from mycelium (fungi).
For a few years, scientists have been working on lab-cultivated leather using cells of animal origin to grow materials that mimic the properties of real leather (so these aren’t technically vegan). They include Oval by Pact which uses collagen derived from skincare and pharmaceutical waste, and Vitrolabs (bought by Faircraft last year), whose technology involves taking a small biopsy from a real cow.
Real leather is a complex mix of collagen and protein fibres that make it inherently durable, flexible and repairable. When cared for properly, leather can be rehabilitated and over time develops a patina that makes it one of the only materials that improves with age. Since shoes and bags made from leather are expensive, people are more inclined to care for them, wear them for longer and keep them in circulation by donating or selling them. These properties are difficult to replicate in plastic or plant-based materials which tend to degrade and split and cannot be repaired.
Environmental trade-offs
At the heart of the debate about which material is better for the environment are two issues: the fact that livestock is responsible for between 12 – 19% of greenhouse gas emissions globally and ongoing concerns that the measurement tools used to determine environmental impact are weighted to favour synthetic materials.
But as biodiversity loss ramps up, alongside global temperatures, rampant deforestation and the desertification of farmland, Crowley says we need to move beyond conversations about what materials mitigate harm and start investing in materials that are actively doing good – a metric plastic cannot compete on.
“We have to start thinking in a very clear-sighted way, not faffing around to sell more stuff. We need things that deliver on climate and nature,” she says. “The current intensive, overproduction of meat and leather is bad. But if you compare it to regenerative farming, it’s a whole different story.”
Regeneratively farmed materials – including wool and leather – can improve soil health, sequester carbon, increase biodiversity and restore water cycles making landscapes more resilient to extreme weather events. “Let’s just get those cattle grazing in humane, healthy ways that help farmers, that help the land and help the animal,” she says. Process the hides using non-toxic chemicals and “you could have a beautiful natural leather product that creates net positive outcomes. Why don’t we replace bad leather with good leather?”
