I'm happy that exists as an alternative for those who care about this.
I (meat-eater) am done with leather alternatives for now. A while back, I bought the official leather-alternative case for my everyday-carry Roav sunglasses, but it didn't last me very long. Frustrated with that, I ordered a custom made case with real leather, that cost me double the price, but it has been aging really nicely.
For me, paying extra for good leather, that will last longer and is byproduct of meat I already eat, seems to be the best decision in terms of sustainability. Hopefully technology will improve so that we have more options in the future.
Leather’s near-magical. It’s so resilient it’s almost hard to believe it’s real.
It’ll be cool if someone even gets close to that with alternatives, especially at a similar price, but I’m not holding my breath.
I get the impression these alternatives are mostly a replacement for bonded “leather” so far, which is such a shit material that they ought to be able to surpass it without trouble.
There are many natural products which have a similar magic. Cork, sheep wool, bees wax, &c.
And yes most alternative leathers are plastic with 10% of something in top so you can call it "apple" leather, "pine apple" leather, ... Or straight up petrol derivates
leather would be pretty darn perfect if leather shoes didn't need a break-in period.
I'm extremely weary of leather shoewear because I've suffered too many sores in my life, specially when I was a child. I'd like to have comfy shoes that last long but the break in period...
In basic training we were taught to wear in our new boots by bending the toe-half of the sole back and forth for hours, and when we went to bed, we positioned them in a folded up position under our bunk bed frames. When we went to use them the next day, they weren't too stiff. Still have those boots, some ~15 years later, for mowing the lawn now though.
My daughter was very disappointed with the shoes she bought recently. They lasted less than half the time real leather model from the same brand did and cost more! They also developed creases and were difficult to polish. I am ok with alternatives when they are alternatives not replacements. It's like with vegan vs. vegetarian options at my local japanese food place. They replaced all but one vegetarian dish with vegan variants and are not bringing the vegetarian dishes back. That's not choice, that's forced replacement.
Doc Martens used to be good, but quality has declined steeply.
Their Wikipedia page will give you a good idea as to when and why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Martens
Frankly, I'm not sure we should completely abandon leather.
Large mammals die all the time, and it would be more wasteful to just burn the leather, rather than use it as a durable material.
Besides, how much livestock is grown and slaughtered specifically for leather? A minute amount, presumably, but I'm willing to be proven wrong in anyone has the data.
The kinds of people who would go out of their way to buy plant-based substitute leather products presumably are also not on board with the mass slaughter of livestock for any purpose. Even if they were dying "anyway", to purchase any byproducts is to partially fund the operation and improve the economics of an industry they consider unethical.
Surely those people are also choosing not to have children, since the human population growth of this planet is what spurred the less ethical farms to exist as more economical, space-efficient ways to farm the fauna people had been farming for centuries? I also don't find the farms entirely ethical, based on the exposé media I'd seen of them. I just don't know what the alternative is, other than have products made partially with fossil fuels that break more frequently.
> as more economical, space-efficient ways to farm the fauna people had been farming for centuries? I also don't find the farms entirely ethical, based on the exposé media I'd seen of them.
I’ve been vegan for more than 15 years, i have no children but that’s an entirely separate debate, forecasts all around the world indicate a slowdown in global birthrates this might seem good at first but is not so much, it means an increase in average age of population which means lower birthrates and less people in the productive age brackets. The earth have enough resources to feed the current population many times over but not its greed, meat is incredibly inefficient as food, only 1% to 4% of the fed calories are converted into food, that without mentioning emissions, water usage, deforestation, soil contamination and the ethical problem of enslaving torturing and killing billions of sentient creatures just for sensory pleasure.
> how much livestock is grown and slaughtered specifically for leather
Yes and, I would hope that the majority of leather comes from cattle that are grown and slaughtered for meat. In that case, the amount of cattle put through the meat grinder is a function of both the demand for meat and the demand for leather, but it would be unlikely to be sensitive to both at the same time. I suspect, given that meat has so much turnover whereas leather lasts a long time, that we are meat-bound rather than hide-bound.
Agricultural byproducts are great if they are going to be burned or otherwise wasted otherwise. (But TBH, they should be tilled back into the ground to add organic matter to the soil.)
Is there something specific to pineapple vs some other plant that makes it dependent on pineapple? How did they decide to use a pineapple? Did they do the same thing with several types of plants and pineapple won, or was there something more sciencey where they looked at the make up of the plant that something in it indicated it would be the ideal plant? Inquiring minds want to know
Would love it if they started comparing plant based leathers to plastic based leather alternatives and actual leather. When those comparisons are favorable I expect there will be a bigger impact on both sustainability and the market.
Great to see more and more movement in this sector. In addition to working in place of animal leather, these plant-based options can also replace petroleum-derived materials like Polyurethane (PU) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC).
There are already plant-based materials out there[1] that are commercialized and in production which pass the stringent durability/performance/etc. criteria for automotive seating and other high-wear applications.
Sure, and just like all synthetic leathers, it will be both more fossil fuel intensive and an inferior material to the real thing. The current leather market is supplied almost entirely by slaughterhouse byproduct, and this just sounds like more needless human waste.
Your assumptions are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in your comment. At the moment hydrocarbon-based vegan leather is inferior economically and more fossil fuel intensive. I don't necessarily agree that a vegan leather based on rubber and pineapple leaves (agricultural bi-product) is going to be more economically or fossil fuel intensive.
Do you have experience in this industry or something, or did you just pull this out of your ass?
I am also aware of this fact, which is why I myself have real leather boots, phone case, etc. However, it's not very forward thinking to not develop alternatives that are vegan, because it may be possible that the world eats less meat in the future, and therefore produces less animal leather.
I also haven't heard the answer to my question– how is this particular alternative to leather, based on rubber and pineapple leaves (and not plastic), particularly bad for the economy or the environment?
How is it "boiling the planet"? If anything, using petroleum for some purpose other than fuel is fighting global warming, by consuming a finite supply.
Microplastics are bad, but that's indirectly killing animals - not directly. And vegan leather is a silly thing to nitpick over this issue, when there's probably roughly as much plastic in a pair of shoes as in a disposable water bottle you use once.
I know tone is hard to read over text but I'm honestly baffled how you got "very angry" from my comment. I'm simply responding? Nobody claims that vegan leather is perfect but veganism is about making a best effort. Objecting to pleather on the grounds of "microplastics" seems like an unreasonably high standard. Are we also to deny that lettuce is vegan because slugs get killed? Defining "vegan" in such a way that nothing is vegan is counterproductive.
I can easily clear up the difference, “vegan” leather can or cannot harm animals you cannot be sure “if” or how much, real leather on the other hand cannot exist without a dead animal. As a vegan I usually find these type of comments more like a defensive “you’re not better than me” same as when they tell you that avocados and almond milk use a lot of water and iphones are made using child labor.
For leather, meat, dairy there is already a dead animal, for plastics might be in the future, maybe not. If you focus purely on the environmental “superiority” of leather remember also that it is a byproduct of factory farming and that its production is not as “environmentally friendly” as it looks at first.
I vaguely remember (a decade or so ago) the demand for beef outstripping the demand for leather, leading to a glut of leather and a subsequent crash in price. I don't really eat beef anymore, so I wonder if there would still be a leather surplus if everyone stopped eating beef, but we still relied on cows for dairy products?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 95.3 ms ] threadI (meat-eater) am done with leather alternatives for now. A while back, I bought the official leather-alternative case for my everyday-carry Roav sunglasses, but it didn't last me very long. Frustrated with that, I ordered a custom made case with real leather, that cost me double the price, but it has been aging really nicely.
For me, paying extra for good leather, that will last longer and is byproduct of meat I already eat, seems to be the best decision in terms of sustainability. Hopefully technology will improve so that we have more options in the future.
It’ll be cool if someone even gets close to that with alternatives, especially at a similar price, but I’m not holding my breath.
I get the impression these alternatives are mostly a replacement for bonded “leather” so far, which is such a shit material that they ought to be able to surpass it without trouble.
And yes most alternative leathers are plastic with 10% of something in top so you can call it "apple" leather, "pine apple" leather, ... Or straight up petrol derivates
I'm extremely weary of leather shoewear because I've suffered too many sores in my life, specially when I was a child. I'd like to have comfy shoes that last long but the break in period...
Thanks for the tips though
(Yes, it was private equity)
It was a choice for the restaurant - they are agents in this as well, and may be doing so based on their own values vs. economic forecasts.
Large mammals die all the time, and it would be more wasteful to just burn the leather, rather than use it as a durable material.
Besides, how much livestock is grown and slaughtered specifically for leather? A minute amount, presumably, but I'm willing to be proven wrong in anyone has the data.
I’ve been vegan for more than 15 years, i have no children but that’s an entirely separate debate, forecasts all around the world indicate a slowdown in global birthrates this might seem good at first but is not so much, it means an increase in average age of population which means lower birthrates and less people in the productive age brackets. The earth have enough resources to feed the current population many times over but not its greed, meat is incredibly inefficient as food, only 1% to 4% of the fed calories are converted into food, that without mentioning emissions, water usage, deforestation, soil contamination and the ethical problem of enslaving torturing and killing billions of sentient creatures just for sensory pleasure.
Yes and, I would hope that the majority of leather comes from cattle that are grown and slaughtered for meat. In that case, the amount of cattle put through the meat grinder is a function of both the demand for meat and the demand for leather, but it would be unlikely to be sensitive to both at the same time. I suspect, given that meat has so much turnover whereas leather lasts a long time, that we are meat-bound rather than hide-bound.
There are already plant-based materials out there[1] that are commercialized and in production which pass the stringent durability/performance/etc. criteria for automotive seating and other high-wear applications.
[1] e.g. https://vonholzhausen.com/
Do you have experience in this industry or something, or did you just pull this out of your ass?
The only possible impetus for more synthetics is a new product to market towards first world vegans who feel bad.
I also haven't heard the answer to my question– how is this particular alternative to leather, based on rubber and pineapple leaves (and not plastic), particularly bad for the economy or the environment?
Its boiling the planet and directly killing animals through microplastics in the food and water.
In my opinion there is no generally available leather or leather alternative for shoes that are vegan.
Microplastics are bad, but that's indirectly killing animals - not directly. And vegan leather is a silly thing to nitpick over this issue, when there's probably roughly as much plastic in a pair of shoes as in a disposable water bottle you use once.
Because Americans are using intensive methods to extract oil from the ground.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=25372
And they are behind other western countries in how they produce energy.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
> And vegan leather is a silly thing to nitpick over
It was a phrase that was used and I find it weird. I would not have mentioned it otherwise.
> there's probably roughly as much plastic in a pair of shoes as in a disposable water bottle you use once.
I avoid those too. Metal reusable, and had it for quite a few years now.
You seem very angry that someone doesn't like the phrase "vegan leather" for a product that is shit for the planet.
The murder of an animal is bad.
The death of all living things is also bad. Why do people feel the need to defend shitty plastics?
Has Feather-Pucker: 0/10
Smells like a dog when wet: 0/10
Sliiightly stretchy but mostly comes back to shape except after 10,000 times: 0/10
will remove bugs from windscreen: 0/10