Future Fabrics Expo - Why Is Vegan Leather So Prevalent?
I am often astounded when it comes to the sustainability areas of fabric trade shows just how many of them are leather alternatives. And this was something that came up again last week at the Future Fabrics Expo. Maybe it’s because I don’t work in leather, or produce leather products! But the supply chain of leather and how it’s communicated is something that has always fascinated me, so I wanted to dive into it a bit here. It’s also worth noting that the leather industry is absolutely massive. In 2020 it was valued at US$394 billion! And the alternative, or synthetic, leather industry is valued at just US$31.4 billion. So when you look at these figures you can see why 89% of Next Gen material investment goes into alternative leathers.
Brown and white cows grazing in a field of green grass next to some water and under blue skies with white clouds.
When it come real leather, and for the purposes of this article we’re just looking at cow hides, we’re not looking at other animal skins because that is a whole other conversation! The leather industry and its working groups push the leather is a bi-product of the meat industry. My view is that it is a little more complicated than that. Naturally you would want to be able to sell every part of your product. And let’s be honest, smallholders and farmers outside of massive agriculture organisations, are absolutely not paid enough for their products. And in these situations I think it would be wise to consider it a bi-product and certify it accordingly.. One farmer once said to me; “the hides are worthless to us, we do not make any farming decisions based on their hides so therefore it is a waste product.” But her experience as a smaller farmer compared to the massive agricultural organisations you now get, is going to be widely different. At the end of the day, the hides come from a cow that has been slaughtered for its meet in most cases. There are times when calfs are slaughtered for a particularly soft skin, and in that instance the meat is the bi-product to a very expensive skin. Hence why this bi-product argument can be a little confusing. It’s also a side bar to the main conversation, which is that cattle raising is damaging to the environment and we need to reduce the number of cows on our planet. The one thing that leather has over all its competitors is that it is durable, naturally water resistant, easily repairable and biodegradable.
One area where leather alternatives have really exploded is food waste. The EU has lumped food and textile waste together in one strategy which I think is telling in terms of where they want investment to be focussed. But the idea of using food waste has the same problems as saying leather is a bi-product of the food industry. For example grape leather is made from the left over grape skins from the wine industry, for which there is a lot. This waste can be mixed with chemicals and dehydrated to create a skin. What chemicals are often a protected secret so who knows what’s in there. Some alternative leather producers feed food waste to a bacteria to make a cellulose and then mix it with chemicals. For others there is even a question about whether the food waste they use is technically food waste. 1500 mangos a week are discarded in Holland, which is the largest trading area for mangos globally. And they don’t have the climate to grow them! Whole mangos are discarded to be made into a leather. Given the global level of food insecurity and rising wealth inequality driving people into poverty; is using a food to create leather products the best use of that? The other argument is cost. The mangos are given away for free because it is cheaper than having to pay to dispose of them. That isn’t going to create an incentive to reduce the amount of food waste in the first place, which is the first aim of the EU Food and Textile Waste Strategy. Meanwhile it creates a difficult market for farmers to operate in.
Leather tannery in India. A man in a brightly patterned outfit and hat leans against a large clay vat. Leather skins are laid out drying on the ground. They stand in front of a traditional India orange building.
Leather seems to be an all or nothing conversation. And out of every sustainability conversation out there, it’s probably the most contentious. At the end of the day it is still possible to reduce the number of cows globally, reduce the emissions and chemical use through some seriously cool innovations that are coming to market, while still growing the leather industry. And give more money to farmers for the hides. But money isn’t being invested into that space nearly as much as the alternative are. And a lot of these alternatives still use plastics in order to mimic some of the naturally occurring performance of leather, which makes some of the sustainability arguments obsolete.
Regardless of yours, or your customers, personal choice; those working in leather and alternative leather need to have full visibility on the supply chain from the very moment the feedstock becomes tangible. From a social, ecological and regulatory standpoint.
On a personal note I do value leather products, and I don’t think switching out all leather to another alternative will have the environmental impact we think it will. Certainly if we want to see a large reduction in emissions from this industry and increase stability for farmers, then there are better ways to work with the industry on that. Unfortunately I do think that the industry is being hindered by environmental legislation that doesn’t make farming profitable, and that in part is because working groups spend too much time pushing the status quo narrative while blaming the smallest players in the industry. I read a Forbes article awhile back that said the largest tanneries do the best work in making leather more environmentally friendly, while the smaller tanneries in the Global South are the ones with unregulated chemical use and polluting the waterways. Which entirely misses the point of the economics of scale and how the fashion industry works.
