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In 2016, Francisco Merlino, an environmental chemist at the University of Florence, and furniture designer Gianpiero Tessitore founded Vegea, a technology company that recycles discarded grape residues after winemaking, such as grape skins, grape seeds, etc., from Italian wineries. The innovative production process is used to produce "grape pomace leather" that is 100% plant-based, does not use harmful chemical elements, and has a leather-like structure. However, it should be noted that although this kind of leather is made from recyclable resources, it cannot completely degrade itself because a certain amount of polyurethane (PUD) is added to the finished fabric.

 According to calculations, for every 10 liters of wine produced, about 2.5 liters of waste can be produced, and these wastes can be made into 1 square meter of grape pomace leather. Considering the size of the global red wine market, this process still counts as one of the important advances in ecologically sustainable products. In 2019, the car brand Bentley announced that it had selected Vegea for the interiors of its new models. This collaboration is a huge encouragement for all similar technology innovation companies, because it means that sustainable leather can already be consumed in more key areas. open up market opportunities in the field.

Pineapple leaf leather
Ananas Anam is a brand that started in Spain. Its founder Carmen Hijosa was shocked by the various impacts of leather production on the environment when she was working as a textile design consultant in the Philippines. So she decided to combine the local natural resources in the Philippines to develop a more sustainable product. Sustaining clothing materials. Ultimately, inspired by the traditional hand-woven fabrics of the Philippines, she used discarded pineapple leaves as raw materials. By purifying the cellulose fibers stripped from the leaves and processing them into non-woven materials, she created a leather with 95% plant content. The replacement was patented and named Piatex. Each piece of standard Piatex can consume 480 pieces of pineapple waste leaves (16 pineapples).

According to estimates, more than 27 million tons of pineapple leaves are discarded every year. If these wastes can be used to make leather, a large part of the emissions from traditional leather production will certainly be reduced. In 2013, Hijosa established Ananas Anam Company, which cooperates with factories in the Philippines and Spain, as well as the largest pineapple planting group in the Philippines, to commercialize Piatex leather. This partnership benefits more than 700 Filipino families, allowing them to earn additional income by providing discarded pineapple leaves. In addition, the remaining plant remains after processing are used as fertilizer. Today, Piatex is used by nearly 3,000 brands in 80 countries, including Nike, H&M, Hugo Boss, Hilton, etc.

leaf leather
Vegetable leathers made from teak wood, banana leaves and palm leaves are also rapidly gaining popularity. Leaf leather not only has the characteristics of light weight, high elasticity, strong durability, and biodegradability, but also has a very special advantage, that is, the unique shape and texture of each leaf will appear on the leather, which will make every user Book covers, wallets and handbags made of leaf leather are unique products that are the only ones in the world.

In addition to avoiding pollution, various leaf hides are also very beneficial in generating income for small communities. Because the material source of this leather is fallen leaves in the forest, sustainable fashion brands can cooperate with economically backward areas, hire community residents to actively plant trees locally, cultivate "raw materials", and then collect fallen leaves and perform preliminary processing to achieve The win-win situation of increasing carbon sinks, increasing income, and ensuring a stable supply of raw materials can be called "if you want to get rich, plant trees first" in the fashion industry.

mushroom leather

Mushroom leather is also one of the hottest “vegan leathers” right now. Mushroom mycelium is a multi-cellular natural fiber made from the root structure of fungi and mushrooms. It is strong and easily degraded, and its texture has many similarities to leather. Not only that, because mushrooms grow quickly and "casually" and are very good at adapting to the environment, this means that product designers can directly "customize" the mushrooms by adjusting their thickness, strength, texture, flexibility and other attributes. Create the material shape you need, thereby avoiding the consumption of a lot of energy required by traditional animal husbandry and improving the efficiency of leather production.

Currently, the leading mushroom leather brand in the field of mushroom leather is called Mylo, which was developed by Bolt Threads, a biotechnology start-up company headquartered in San Francisco, USA. According to relevant information, the company can reproduce the mycelium grown in the natural environment as accurately as possible indoors. After harvesting the mycelium, manufacturers can also use mild acids, alcohols and dyes to emboss the mushroom leather to simulate snake or crocodile skin. At present, international brands such as Adidas, Stella McCartney, Lululemon, and Kering have begun to cooperate with Mylo to produce mushroom leather clothing products.

coconut leather

India-based studio Milai founders Zuzana Gombosova and Susmith Suseelan have been working on creating sustainable alternatives from coconuts. They cooperated with a coconut processing factory in southern India to collect discarded coconut water and coconut skin. Through a series of processes such as sterilization, fermentation, refining, and molding, the coconut was finally made into leather-like accessories. Not only is this leather waterproof, it also changes color over time, giving the product great visual appeal.

Interestingly, the two founders did not initially think that they could make leather from coconuts, but as they kept trying, they gradually discovered that the experimental product on their hands looked a lot like a kind of leather. After realizing that the material had similarities to leather, they began to further explore the properties of coconut in this regard and continued to study other complementary properties such as strength, flexibility, processing technology and material availability to make it as close as possible to the real thing. leather. This may give many people a revelation, that is, sustainable design does not only start from the perspective of existing products. Sometimes focusing on material design can also yield considerable gains.

There are many interesting types of sustainable leather, such as cactus leather, apple leather, bark leather, nettle leather, and even "biomanufactured leather" made directly from stem cell engineering, etc.