Hide and chic: are clothes and apparel made from alternative leathers better for the environment?

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.

The global production of raw hides used in traditional leather has increased over the last two decades from 10.5m tonnes in 2005 to 13.8m tonnes in 2024. Photograph: fstop123/Getty Images/iStockphoto

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.

The founder of consultancy Sustainabelle, Christine Goulay, who also worked in sustainable sourcing and innovation at Kering, says material innovation takes time. “If you look at [it] historically, most of them take 30, 40, 50 years to mainstream … I think we need to just readjust what we think should be happening and when.”

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?”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/12/hide-and-chic-are-clothes-and-apparel-made-from-alternative-leathers-better-for-the-environment

Your Next Purse Could Be Made Out Of Mushrooms

From etvbharat.com

Researchers have created durable, biodegradable vegan leather from fungal fibres, using a manufacturing process designed for large-scale production

The search for leather alternatives has led researchers somewhere unexpected: fungi. Although traditional leather is durable, producing it requires animal agriculture, which carries negative environmental impacts. Meanwhile, vegan alternatives are typically made from petroleum-based plastics that are difficult to recycle. Researchers report in ACS Applied Bio Materials that mycelium, the underground network of fibres below mushroom caps, can be pressed into a durable yet compostable leather-like fabric. They even sewed the fabric into a purse.

“Many people are looking for alternatives to fossil fuel-based and animal-derived materials, yet scalable alternatives remain limited,” says Manuel Arias-Barrantes, a co-author of the study. “Our work has solved one significant bottleneck, enabling large-scale production of affordable mycelium-based fabrics.”

Most mycelium materials are made by letting fungi grow across trays until the thread-like fibres knit themselves into a solid sheet. While effective, the approach can’t be used for mass production. Instead, Arias-Barrantes, Géza Szilvay, and their colleagues submerged the fungus Trichoderma reesei in a nutrient-rich liquid and grew it inside tanks like those used to brew beer. Rather than producing a sheet, the fungus grew into a thick, pulp-like mass. The researchers harvested the pulp, washed it, and then mixed in sorbitol (a naturally occurring sugar alcohol frequently added to foods and cosmetics) and cellulose (the primary structural component of plant cell walls) to improve flexibility and strength. Finally, they spread the mixture into thin sheets and dried it, creating a nonwoven, leather-like fabric.

                                                                                                                Getty Images

Unlike the traditional tray method, the new pulp-based approach gave researchers more control over the final material, allowing them to adjust its properties, add colours and textures, or layer the mycelium material onto cotton fabrics. Next, the researchers tested whether the production process could move beyond small laboratory samples. To do this, they used a roller system similar to those used in paper manufacturing, continuously producing mycelium sheets about 8 inches (20 centimeters) wide and 26 feet (8 meters) long. They then used the material to create a prototype handbag.

In laboratory tests, the rolled-out mycelium material reached tensile strengths comparable to traditional leather. The material broke down in water within 28 days and completely disintegrated under industrial composting conditions in about six weeks. Although the material still needs to become more resistant to tearing before mycelium-based products reach consumers, the researchers say the manufacturing process is promising because it uses equipment already common in the biotechnology and printing industries.

Source:  https://doi.org/10.1021/acsabm.6c00471

https://www.etvbharat.com/en/lifestyle/vegan-leather-from-mushrooms-fashion-enn26080801103

Most Vegan Leather Is Plastic. Here’s Why You Might Still Want It On Your Sofa

From nytimes.com

By Ivy Elrod

Years ago, I spilled an entire pot of coffee on a turquoise dining chair upholstered in Ultrasuede, a fake leather. I blotted furiously at the chair with a dish towel before realizing I had no need to panic. The material had not absorbed a single drop.

Ultrasuede and other fake leathers are engineered to mimic the look of animal hide, but they function like performance fabrics, offering durability, colourfastness, and — as I witnessed that day — superior cleanability.

And they’ve come a long way from the sticky, peeling pleather diner booth seats you might remember. If you’ve shopped for a sofa or armchair recently, you’ve likely encountered a dizzying array of fake leathers.

For now, most of the fake leather you’ll encounter when shopping for furniture is still made from plastic polymers. But that’s starting to change. Besides petroleum-based synthetic leathers, there are also bio-based leathers, which contain some percentage of plant material, as well as bio-fabricated leathers, which are grown in a lab, said Theanne Schiros, a professor of materials science at the Fashion Institute of Technology and a Columbia University research scientist. Many fake leathers advertise that they’re vegan or sustainable, or they highlight their apple, cactus, or mushroom origin.

Below, we break down these three kinds of fake leather, how to choose the best one for your needs, and why you might want to opt for fake leather over real leather in the first place.

Most mass-market fake leather is still plastic

        The swatches on the top row are real leather. The bottom row is all synthetic leathers. Ivy Elrod/NYT Wirecutter

If you’re shopping for fake leather from a big furniture company, chances are it’s synthetic, meaning it’s probably made of either petroleum-based PVC (vinyl) or polyurethane (PU). A number of sofas that we recommend in our sleeper sofa guide and in our shopping guide to leather sofas are available in synthetic leather upholstery options. These fake leathers are typically the least expensive type available. While you can find some synthetic leathers at very low prices, higher-quality ones are priced somewhere between a performance fabric and an entry-grade leather.

Synthetic leathers are known for being durable, easy to clean, and resistant to staining. Some also offer qualities that real leathers usually don’t provide, such as UV protection, bleach cleanability, and improved breathability — like some styles of Ultraleather by Ultrafabrics, which is why you might find Ultraleather in the premium seating at Major League Baseball stadiums.

Unlike animal-hide leather, synthetic leathers don’t develop a patina over time. I’ve seen 20-year-old synthetic leather furniture that looks virtually the same as the day it was bought. The trade-off is that it won’t take on the character of a time-worn leather. Whether you think that’s a good or bad thing comes down to personal preference.

I have yet to encounter a synthetic leather that has tricked me, but they can be supple and recall real leather. Still, their handfeel varies widely depending on their material and treatment. For example, Ultrasuede, a distinct company from Ultrafabrics (and an upholstery option for the American Leather Gaines Comfort Sleeper, our top-pick sleeper sofa), has a smooth, napped texture that’s reminiscent of real suede, if with a slightly microfiber quality. Ultraleather is soft and resistant to creasing but, to me, still retains a tell-tale plastic feel.

The best way to know if you like how the synthetic leather feels is by ordering samples. I suggest requesting the largest size available, since standard 4-by-4-inch samples may be too small to give you a real sense of the material.

Instead of relying solely on tiny 4-by-4-inch pieces, request larger swatches. You’ll get a much better sense of the material’s feel. Ivy Elrod/NYT Wirecutter

There are also some more-technical specs to keep in mind. To ensure that the upholstery you choose will last for years, look for a rub count of more than 15,000 for home use; this number indicates how many times an abrasive material can be rubbed against a fabric until its fibres start to break.

You might encounter a hydrolysis rating, which means the product has been tested in high heat and humidity for peeling. Look for a rating of at least five weeks if you live in a humid climate, like Florida.

                  This American Leather Gaines sleeper sofa is upholstered in Ultrasuede. Joshua Lyon/NYT Wirecutter

You might also want to look for Oeko-Tex Standard 100, a voluntary certification that indicates the textile has been independently tested and found to have low enough levels of certain chemicals and substances as to be free of potential harm. And a Greenguard Gold certification means the product has been independently verified to limit certain volatile organic compounds and chemical emissions, including formaldehyde, which can impact indoor air quality.

Bio-based leathers cut back on plastic — but are more expensive

Although synthetic leathers don’t use any animal products, they are primarily plastic. Bio-based leathers, also known as plant-based leathers, incorporate some percentage of plants into their makeup — often waste from the food industry, like apple, grape skins, cactus, or banana — which cuts back on the amount of plastic in the final product. But, at least for the time being, they still require additives to bind or coat the plant material.

Most bio-based leathers indicate the percentage of their plant-based content on their label; if it’s not listed, check the website. Look for the BioPreferred label, which certifies that the material contains a minimum of 25% content of biological origin, but note that a higher percentage doesn’t necessarily translate to better quality as upholstery, since synthetic binders are usually necessary to prevent plant fibres from cracking over time.

This category remains relatively rare for upholstery, though it is becoming more common. Sabai, whose sofas we recommend, offers one cactus-based “bio-based PU” upholstery, Desserto, with 61% bio content, a high 75,000 rub count (compared with the 30,000 minimum I recommend for home use with kids and pets), and stain resistance. Desserto is also more breathable than some other bio-based leathers.

Though less common than synthetic leathers, bio-based leathers are becoming more widely available. Sabai offers its Elevate Sofa in a 61% cactus-based leather (according to the company, Desserto), pictured here. Sabai

As with synthetic leathers, preferences are highly personal, and bio-based leathers can vary widely in how they look and feel. Some do not feel convincingly leather-like to me, while others —such as Banofi, with 97% plant-based content (including banana crop waste and natural rubber) — feel very leather-like, indeed. I highly recommend ordering samples or assessing the upholstery in person before committing.

Bio-based leathers tend to be more expensive than synthetic ones, and they are more commonly available for higher-end furniture (sofas around $4,000 and above). That’s because developing biodegradable biopolymers is expensive, said Preeti Arya, associate professor of textile development and marketing at FIT, in a phone interview. Fully synthetic leathers are more economically viable — at least for now.

But completely plastic-free bio-fabricated leathers are the rarest and priciest of the bunch. These fake leathers are grown in a lab, like those made from mycelium (such as Ecovative Forager and MycoWorks Reishi), and they’re currently available only in limited luxury markets (in the past, I’ve spotted them on items from Hermès and Ligne Roset).

Bio-fabricated leathers are known for their softness and similarity to the texture and feel of real leather — and, excitingly for leather lovers, for their ability to patina. So far, their weaker tensile strength and durability has been an Achilles’ heel. While these textiles represent an ideal future for lower-impact textiles, they remain a “wait and see” for the average shopper.

A beginner’s guide to shopping for fake leather
What do you want?	Look for:
Cleanability and stain resistance	✓ terms like: bleach-cleanable stain-resistant contract grade
Durability	✓ double-rub rating of 30,000 or more ✓ hydrolysis rating of at least five weeks
Lasting colour	✓ colourfastness rating of 4 or above
Chemical transparency	✓ a voluntary third-party certification, such as: Oeko-Tex Standard 100 Greenguard Gold
Less plastic material	✓ a bio content percentage of at least 25% or a BioPreferred certification ✓ a natural fibre backing

Besides helping you decide if you like the look and feel of an upholstery, the back of swatches can contain helpful information on durability and material content. Ivy Elrod/NYT Wirecutter 

Why go fake?

If you’re looking for cleanability, durability, and colourfastness at a more accessible price point, synthetic leathers might be an obvious choice over animal-hide leather. And if you’re opposed to buying any animal products, the choice to go fake is obvious.

But if you’re wondering if fake leather is sustainable or better for the environment than the real stuff, it’s more complicated.

If you’re just focused on reducing petroleum-based products and plastic waste, real leather beats most synthetic leather, and bio-based leather helps cut back to varying degrees, depending on the percentage of plant-based content that they contain. But zoom out beyond plastic, and the idea that vegan leather is inherently better for the planet is a misconception, both Schiros and Arya told me.

The debate often hinges on whether you view a cowhide as a primary product or a salvaged one. Cowhides come primarily from the beef industry; in theory, they’re a waste product. Because of this, some life cycle assessments could attribute a lower environmental burden to leather than to fake leather alternatives, said Joël Mertens, director of Higg Product Tools at the global non-profit Cascale (formerly the Sustainable Apparel Coalition), where he leads the development of standardized metrics to evaluate the environmental impact of textiles, with a focus on supply-chain transparency. A high-quality top-grain leather is also durable and can last decades, lowering its environmental impact over the years it’s in use.

But both the beef industry and leather carry a heavy environmental burden in the form of land and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and chemical pollution from chrome tanning. In fact, one of the highest-impact ways to cut back on your carbon footprint is to eat less meat and dairy.

With alternative leather, the burden moves downstream. We trade animal agriculture for other environmental burdens, including (for most fake leathers) plastic waste, petrochemical use, and other chemical pollutants. Newer bio-based fabrics are a step in the right direction, but some have as low as just 10% bio-based content and may not be inherently lower impact than leather from a life cycle perspective, according to the experts I spoke with.

At the moment, most of the fake leather available is still made from plastic, at least to some degree. As with any upholstery, choosing the best one comes down to balancing your values and personal preferences, your budget, and your needs, so you can enjoy it and use it for as long as possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/what-is-vegan-leather/

Opinion: Oatly Lost the Word ‘Milk’ – Is ‘Leather’ Next?

From greenqueen.com.hk

By Stephanie Downs

Stephanie Downs, co-founder and CEO of eco leather start-up Uncaged Innovations, reflects on how the plant-based milk labelling debate could be echoed in the materials industry.

When Oatly lost a recent Supreme Court battle over its use of the word ‘milk’, regulators framed the decision as a victory for consumer clarity. The term, they argued, is animal-specific and applying it to plant-based drinks risks confusing shoppers about what they are buying. 

For innovators, however, the decision highlights a broader question: how language should adapt as new technologies reshape familiar products. Cars naturally evolved into electric cars. Phones became smartphones. Currency added cryptocurrency. Why do some industries evolve to accommodate the old and new while others fight innovation?

A similar dispute is now emerging in fashion. As biomaterials become credible competitors to animal hides, the question of what can legally be called ‘leather’ is becoming the new regulatory discussion. 

The debate over terminology

                                                                                 Courtesy: Uncaged Innovations/Loué Studio

The rise of alternative materials is not a niche phenomenon. Over the last decade, the leather industry has seen the birth of a number of successful alternative material companies innovating with natural ingredients like fungi, grains and agricultural waste. Analysts expect the production of bio-based leathers to grow by 37.4% CAGR from 2024-34. 

In an attempt to slow this growth, terms such as ‘vegan leather’ and ‘plant-based leather’ are now banned in many European countries, one being Italy, which, alongside China and Brazil, is one of the biggest leather producers in the world. Here, companies using plant-based prefixes on their products now face the threat of heavy fines or even criminal prosecution.  

Regulators argue that it is misleading to consumers for companies to equate synthetic or plant-based material with genuine animal-derived leather. Yet critics point out that this dynamic is familiar. It is a classic growing pain where old terminology struggles to keep up with modern innovation. 

Deciding the value of materials

Debates over what can be called leather miss the larger shift in how materials are made and valued. Take, for example, the ice industry. 

Originally, ice was seen as a ‘natural’ product, harvested from frozen lakes and rivers. When refrigeration technology emerged, the ‘natural ice’ industry insisted that this new machine-made ice was to be labelled as ‘artificial’, and launched smear campaigns to convince the public that it was unnatural, full of chemicals, and dangerous. This was pretty ironic given the dangerous origins of their ice, which was harvested from dirty rivers and lakes. 

Today, it is just ice. Though the industry tried all kinds of tactics to protect its territory, the new technology eventually won. Why? Because it solved real-world problems of cost and performance. This same logic should be applied to how leather is viewed today. 

Critics of alternative materials insist that only animal hide deserves the name leather, even though the term synthetic leather has been used since the 1970s. The concern seems to have bubbled up in just the last 10 years as newer and more eco-friendly materials have entered the scene. 

Banning a term doesn’t change the underlying reality that brands’ and consumers’ definition of value has evolved. Brands want a product that is high quality, easy to scale to meet commercial needs, and offered at stable prices. Consumers want products that are aesthetically pleasing and reasonably priced, and modern shoppers are increasingly interested in how materials are sourced and produced. 

Collaboration, not litigation

A more constructive response would acknowledge that innovation rarely eliminates tradition overnight; more often, it reshapes it. But this evolution requires a shift in how we view the relationship between tradition and innovation.

Heritage tanneries have a unique opportunity to help lead this transition by leveraging centuries of expertise in finishing, dyeing, and structural manipulation. These respected suppliers could partner with this new wave of biotech start-ups to refine their products and gain from it themselves. 

Biomaterial innovators will ultimately succeed or fail based on the benefit they provide, rather than their labels. New innovations enable capabilities such as fragrance customisation, expanding the creative possibilities available to designers, shaving months off production timelines and significantly de-risking the supply chain for brands.  

Legal battles can slow change, but they rarely halt it. If incumbent industries focus solely on protecting terminology, they risk overlooking the larger transformation of the materials economy. 

This transition offers us a chance to move past the ‘leather vs non-leather’ binary and actually focus on creating a marketplace where materials are judged by their benefits to brands and consumers rather than their proximity to an animal.  

https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/uncaged-innovations-vegan-leather-plant-based-milk-labels-oatly/