【D&A Knowledge Hub】Is Vegan Leather a Sustainable Option?

In recent years, the fashion industry has begun to pay attention to sustainability and animal welfare. Some brands with vegan leather as their selling point have emerged one after another. The so-called vegan leather generally refers to leather without any animal footprints, and there cannot be any animal testing in the process of leather manufacturing.

“Vegan leather” is not a new term. It first appeared in the late 19th century and was developed as an alternative to animal leather, which is what we now often call artificial leather. The term vegan leather emerged in the fashion world around 2010. Celebrity designers like Stella McCartney started creating high-quality clothing and accessories without animal leather. In recent years, vegan leather refers to leather made from plant-based materials, such as mushrooms, pineapple peels, cactus peels, and raisin peels.

Image credit: Desserto

The Rise of Vegan Leather

In the call for more sustainability, the rise of vegan leather comes with the environmental movement in recent years. Compared with animal leather, vegan leather is considered to be cruelty-free —which is what today’s consumers are looking out for in purchase.

Some of the world’s famous fashion brands, including Hermès, are also incorporating innovative leather alternatives into their manufacturing processes, which promotes sustainable transformation in the fashion industry. The Victoria travel bag launched by Hermès which is usually crafted with Hermès’ grainy Clemence calfskin, will now come in the mushroom-derived leather alternative, Sylviana. Parisian label Chloé also launched a handful of eco-friendly pouches and mini bags made with apple-based leather through its diffusion line, See By Chloé.

Image credit: Hermès & See By Chloé

The sustainability of vegan leather is generally explored from the following two aspects:

Sustainability of Raw Materials

Although the raw materials used in vegan leather are partly derived from plant fibers, its nature is artificial leather. Similar to other artificial leather, it is necessary to add polymer as binders to mimic leather-like textures and properties.

Given this, high-end vegan leathers also adopt environmentally friendly polymers as binders to minimize the chemical harm to the human body and the environment.

Sustainability in Processing

With the rise of environmental awareness, many designers not only pay attention to the selection of eco-friendly raw materials, but also focus on the pollution emission in the process of product production. Therefore, manufacturers of vegan leather need to actively engage in energy conservation and emission reduction under the environmental protection policies and industry norms of various countries, and try their best to reduce water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the production process.

There is no doubt that vegan leather is an innovative attempt to practice sustainable development in the artificial leather industry. As can be seen from the market response, vegan leather consumers are awakening to a global sustainable fashion movement that is widely supported by enterprises.