Is 'vegan leather' a sustainable

alternative to animal leather?

ABC Science
 / 
By Tegan Taylor for Life Matters
Posted ThuThursday 24 MayMay 2018 at 1:15am, updated ThuThursday 24 MayMay 201
8 at 4:52am

Does calling something vegan make it intrinsically better?(Unsplash: Robbie Noble)

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Many stores — particularly those that spruik their ethical standards — are now offering
"vegan leather" products.

Vegan products are produced without animal products, but the term vegan often
appears in the same spaces as other socially conscious claims, including environmental
friendliness.

So when we see the term vegan leather, are those items just for those who want to
avoid animal products? Or are they kinder on the environment as well?

What exactly is vegan leather?

Simply put, it's a leather alternative that doesn't involve animal products. What this
looks like in practice most of the time is a synthetic fabric that's structured and printed
to perform a bit like leather.

This type of fabric isn't new, even if the "vegan leather" label is, although the technology
has advanced considerably since the cracked vinyl of a few decades ago.

Most faux leathers consist of a knitted polyester base with a PVC or polyurethane
coating. But because they're essentially plastic-based, they come with many of the same
environmental problems of other synthetics.
They're usually manufactured from fossil fuels and take a long time to break down once
they reach the end of their useful life, said CSIRO honorary research fellow and leather
expert Robin Cranston.

And if we're looking at net environmental impact, there's all the other environmental
problems associated with fossil fuel extraction to consider too.

"So you go from one industry which is traditionally based on skins that come from the
meat industry to another industry that's heavily dependent on petrochemicals," Mr
Cranston said.

But there's a demand for fake leather, and not only for people who want to avoid animal
products, Mr Cranston said.

"The reality is, for a long time worldwide there was clearly an enormous shortfall in
leather production to satisfy demand," he said.

"There is simply not enough leather produced worldwide to satisfy the demands for
shoes, coats, upholstery."

Faux leathers are usually made with a knitted polyester base and PVC coating.(Pexels:
Alexandra Maria)

Figuring out how to get what's essentially a plastic product to mimic the properties of
an animal skin has taken decades, but Mr Cranston said the industry had got its
technology pretty close.

"You want something that will absorb moisture, that breathes as well," he said.

"There's a lot of very clever science that's gone into producing a lookalike product."

Some faux leather manufacturers are also refining their polyurethane products to reduce
the amount of petroleum needed to produce them.

For example, British fashion designer Stella McCartney claims her "vegetarian leather" is
made with a recycled polyester backing, solvent-free polyurethanes and a coating made
from at least 50 per cent vegetable oil.
You've got a hide on you
To compare the environmental credentials of traditional leather versus vegan leather —
it helps to understand a little about how animal leathers are made.

In comparison to plastic-based leather alternatives, those within the animal leather

industry point out leather puts to use a waste material from the meat industry.

"The leather industry is basically a by-product industry," Mr Cranston said.

"If you didn't have a leather industry you could have a massive amount of hides basically
dumped, creating an enormous problem."

Traditional leather tanning techniques are famously still practised in Fes, Morocco.
(Unsplash: Federico Gutierrez)

But you've got to do some work to an animal skin to stop it from hardening and
putrefying and instead turn it into a supple, durable product.

Tanning is the process of chemically crosslinking and stabilising the proteins in the skin,
and there are a couple of ways to do this.

The most common method is using basic chromium sulfate or other forms of trivalent
chromium. This initial process is relatively fast — it takes about a day — and is the basis
for further processes to yield a very soft, flexible leather that's favoured for clothing and
handbags.

Further processes include dyeing, retanning and using oils and fats to soften the leather,
depending on what its eventual use is.

Chrome-tanned leather has been criticised for polluting waterways — and when Mr
Cranston began working in leather research for the CSIRO in 1969, tanning was one of
the dirtiest manufacturing industries in Australia.
Environmental impact of that shirt on your back

What goes into manufacturing the various textiles we wear and how do the
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Read more

But together with his colleagues, Mr Cranston developed techniques for reducing and
reusing waste.

Chrome from the tanning process was filtered out and reused, with the water recycled
and purified for irrigation.

Hair from hides, which used to be dissolved off and flushed out with the wastewater,
was recovered and used as a fertiliser.

"Per kilogram of leather being produced it was one of the dirtiest manufacturing
industries in the country, because of what it was discharging down the sewers and to
tips and dumps around the country, because of what you had to get rid of, and the
amount of water you had to use too," he said.

Australia's leather industry has shrunk considerably, as production has moved to

countries with cheaper labour costs.

The CSIRO says the innovations Mr Cranston and his colleagues developed are now
used in many places around the world. But Mr Cranston said some of the problems
Australia faced in the 60s are now being seen in developing nations.

"[The environmental impact] is still dramatic. They haven't got the money to put in the
kind of technology that's needed to clean it all up," he said.

Is vegetable tanning a natural alternative?

A much smaller industry than chrome tanning, vegetable tanning involves using the
tannins that naturally occur in certain plants to transform a hide into leather.

Vegetable-tanned leather is thicker and not as pliable as its chrome-tanned cousin,

suiting it to heavy-duty applications like shoe soles, belts, saddles and bridles.
Vegetable-tanned leather is favoured for saddles and bridles because it's supple but
tough.(ABC Rural: Katrina Beavan)

But while something with the word "vegetable" in the title sounds like it might be better,
this method comes with its own downsides, according to RMIT textile technologist Mac
Fergusson.

"Vegetable tanning materials, you've got to put a lot on. You're putting on 20, 25 per
cent of solid matter onto the leather," said Mr Ferguson, who has spent 20 years
working in leather and faux leather manufacture.

Commonly used tannins come from trees such as oak or, closer to home, wattle,
meaning these trees have to be cut down to harvest the chemicals. And it's a thirsty
process, requiring more water than chrome tanning.

A 2016 study into chrome versus vegetable-tanned leather found no significant

differences in the environmental footprint of each, but plenty of variation between
individual tanneries.

Leathers ain't leathers

Once an animal hide has been tanned, it's often split horizontally. The top layer — called
top-grain or full-grain leather — is the premium product, and has the grain from where
the hair used to be.

The lower layer is sometimes coated with plastic and printed to have the appearance of
having the grain. Other remnants might be ground up into a powder, wet with adhesive
and rolled out to create a composite material.

So it's possible to have a leather product that also carries some of the problems of
synthetic-based "vegan leathers".

"You need to be a little bit careful about what that [swing tag] means," Mr Cranston
said.

"It's a good use of a waste product, but there's a big difference between buying an
Italian aniline leather shoulder bag and walking into one of the cheap department stores
and buying what is being sold as a 'leather' bag."
Top-grain leather is often badged as such, and carries a price tag to go with its premium
status, Mr Cranston said.

The bottom layer of leather is sometimes called "corrected grain", and you'll often find
leather-adhesive composites alongside "genuine leather" swing tags.

The 'alternative' alternatives

While the majority of faux leathers still rely on fossil fuels, recent innovations mean
they're no longer the only option for people who want to eschew animal products
entirely.

Dr Peter Musk works with so-called vegan leather grown from kombucha cultures.(ABC
News: Stephanie Smail, File Photo)

New leather-like materials are being made from products that would otherwise have
gone to waste, such as cork, pineapple leaves and mushroom mycelium (the fungus
equivalent of a root system).

Putting waste products to use diverts them from landfill, which makes environmental
sense.

But Mr Cranston said these plant-based leather alternatives still required something to
stick the cellulose fibres that make them up together, and that could often be plastic-
based adhesives, so they're not necessarily doing away with fossil fuels entirely.

Another alternative material is kombucha leather, which is grown from the same sludgy
symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast used to make the trendy fermented tea drink.

The slimy culture can be dried, then softened with coconut oil to create a fabric that
looks and feels a lot like leather, but with a tiny environmental footprint.

Then when you're finished with it, it can be composted, said Dr Peter Musk, who leads
work into kombucha leather at The Edge at State Library of Queensland.
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Dr Musk thinks alternatives like his benchtop-grown material could be the answer to
the problem of fast fashion.

"Fashion is disposable already and the problem is it's not disposable, it's a tremendous
waste of resources," Dr Musk said.

"The fact that you can have your own creative input into your own style and not feel
guilty for only wearing it once or twice is maybe a good thing."

Dr Musk said one of the most exciting things about the kombucha leather product was
that anyone could grow it and make whatever they wanted.

Kombucha leather is not without its drawbacks: it hardens and becomes brittle over
time, and it's not waterproof.

But Dr Musk is optimistic that technology and creativity will see alternative leather
applications expand.

"Fashion is the most innovative of all the technologies," he said.

"When something happens, it happens first in fashion, then filters through into other
things — into architecture, and then the engineers get their heads around it."