Leather is sumptuous.
Leather is luxurious.
Leather is bad-ass.
Leather is . . . bad?
While the advertising pages of fashion, automotive, and shelter magazines are filled with images of gorgeously tanned hides as trench coats, sports car seating, and interior details, there’s a good chance that the editorial pages of those same magazines are talking about the ever-growing number of leather alternatives. Whether they are made from mushrooms, pineapple, or cacti – or grown in the lab – these “vegan leathers” are making news.
But, why?
Most people are on board with the fact that fur is bad – well, most people living below the 60° parallel. While natural fur is among the best insulators, hence its continued use in Arctic regions, it is more widely known, and decried, as a luxury material. The vast majority of furs do not go into life-saving, insulated garments, but into quasi-useless articles of clothing like slippers, handbags, and grossly-oversized coats that are worn to make the wearer look hot, rather than to be hot.
When Justin Bieber wore his hooded fur out in Los Angeles not long ago, it was a chilly . . . 61°F/16°C. Similar faux-pas have been exhibited by celebrities and plebeians alike, but the anti-fur forces have relegated the material to the fringes of the fashion world.
Enter leather.
Recently, critics have been raising the issue that leather isn’t a whole lot more ethical than the fur that used to cover it. Aside from the animals that are killed in order to provide the material, large amounts of toxic chemicals are required (in most leather processing) to “tan” the material, exposing laborers to an unsafe work environment, and many are released into waterways. Other arguments include the massive impact that the livestock industry has on the environment – in terms of water consumed, waste produced, and forests that are cut down. When looking at the impacts of material production on the environment, leather is – on virtually every metric – considered among the “heaviest”. (There are some, this author included, who feel that there is some misattribution of factors in the calculations – meaning that the proportion of inputs and outputs from the raising of cattle are being unfairly “saddled” on the leather industry, and not on the beef industry . . .)
According to researchers, the production of cow leather produces four times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions than synthetic leather (made from petroleum-based plastics), and SIX times the amount produced by plant-based leathers.
The leather industry pushes back on most of these claims with a single reply: leather is a byproduct of the beef industry, and the hides are being turned into leather rather than throwing them out. There are also less impactful discussions about novel tanning processes that are more environmentally friendly, but they lack the simplicity of “we’re just picking up the trash”.
There is no question that, as the beef industry expands, more hides are being produced; but there IS a large distinction between “hides” and “leather”, and it revolves around those chemicals we talked about earlier.
Hides are an organic byproduct, and will break down into organic matter if properly disposed of – that’s the reason you don’t see acres of tacky throw rugs strewn around the forest. The hides of dead animals decompose, along with anything else that isn’t consumed by predators. Tanning is the process of preserving that hide, so that our shoes, belts, and – yes – handbags do NOT suffer from decay.
So, when the leather industry says it is removing “waste” from the system, it isn’t 100% telling the truth: the hides “could” be disposed of in such a way that they simply provided fertilizer for the next generation of plants. To their credit, however, the volume of hides produced to satiate our carnivorous cravings is such that it is incredibly difficult and costly to sustainably dispose of them. Much like the Pacific Northwest has a dangerously large amount of sawdust – just wood particles – that can literally poison the environment if simply dumped in it.
Current trailblazers in the market that are looking to turn those plants into a better leather include companies working with pineapple (Piñatex), mushroom (Reishi), cactus (Desserto), and apple (Frumat – one of the earliest, but also one of the most elusive in terms of actual information).
On a completely different level, companies like Modern Meadow are exploring ways to “grow” leather using advances in gene editing. They change the DNA of bacteria, feed them, and they produce collagen as waste, and then that collagen – the natural building block of leather – is processed in a way to produce a sheet material.
Are these materials going to make a huge dent in the current state of things? Definitely not. Are they better options? Probably yes.
Leather has been around for ages, and will remain with us for some time. That said, as we all learn more and more about the (frankly, massive) impact of industrial meat production on the environment, and how new options can provide us with the materials we need at a much lower cost to that environment, we will see things begin to shift.
In the meantime, look for leather that has been “Vegetable Tanned”, eliminating chemicals and reflecting a greater commitment to sustainable practices; look for leather from “Restorative Farming” operations, where there is a commitment to zero waste practices; or dive right in and sample some plant-based leathers.