Hide and chic: are clothes and apparel made from alternative leathers better for the environment? — SkimNews
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- Three top leather alternatives — Mylo (Bolt Threads, mushroom mycelium), Piñatex (Ananas Anam, pineapple leaves), and Mirum (Natural Fiber Welding, cork) — have stopped being produced, and MycoWorks (Reishi) narrowly escaped insolvency last year.
- Investors poured over $1 billion into next-gen leather companies, yet barriers of price parity, limited brand adoption beyond capsule collections, performance issues, and reliance on fossil-fuel-derived binders and coatings have blocked mainstream uptake.
- Guardian Australia contacted over a dozen plant-based and lab-grown leather innovators, but only four — Desserto (cacti), Innovera (Modern Meadow, plant-based proteins), Nutico (cocoa and walnut waste), and Pliant (bio-based rubber) — could point to products currently available to buy.
- Global raw hide production for traditional leather rose steadily from 10.5 million tonnes in 2005 to 13.8 million tonnes in 2024, according to Textile Exchange, evidence that alternatives have failed to slow demand growth.
- Most vegan leather products sold today are plastic — polyurethane or polyvinyl chloride (pleather) — which are fossil-fuel derived, shed microplastics, cannot be effectively repaired, and persist in landfill and oceans.
- Dr. Helen Crowley, founder of Nature Matters and former Kering sustainable-sourcing lead, argues the industry should pursue "good leather" via regenerative farming — citing soil health, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and restored water cycles — rather than plastic-heavy alternatives.
- Lab-cultivated leather companies like Pact (Oval, using collagen from skincare/pharmaceutical waste) and Faircraft (which acquired Vitrolabs, whose tech takes a biopsy from a real cow) grow animal cells to mimic real leather, though these products aren't technically vegan.
- Livestock accounts for 12–19% of global greenhouse gas emissions, complicating direct environmental comparisons, while measurement tools used to determine impact are weighted to favour synthetic materials.
Why it matters: Consumers paying premium prices for 'sustainable' vegan leather may be buying plastic products that shed microplastics, while the more than $1 billion invested in next-gen materials has failed to slow traditional leather production, which grew from 10.5m tonnes to 13.8m tonnes between 2005 and 2024.
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