All You Need to Know About Vegan Leather vs Animal Leather
Are you finding it hard to understand how vegan leather compares to animal leather? There is so much confusion and controversy around which materials is best to use, which is more sustainable, which one is high quality, which is biodegradable, and the list goes on. Look no further, we have got the answers you’ve been searching for, keep reading!
Why vegan leather in the first place?
One of the major pushes for an animal leather alternative is the animal cruelty involved in producing tradition animal leather. Leather is usually a co-product of factory farming, an industry profiting off of the murder of animals, in particular cows. Cows are sentient beings, meaning they have the ability to feel happiness, sadness, love and fear, just like we do! After learning about the suffering involved with animal farming, many make changes to become vegan, and this is where vegan leather comes into the picture. Today we are going to dive more into the environmental comparison of vegan leather vs animal leather.
What about animal leather?
Animal leather is typically known for its durability, quality and its ability to biodegrade over time. What most people overlook is the resources, waste, land, water, the greenhouse gas emissions, energy, toxins and chemicals involved in producing and then tanning the cow skin to make it into leather. In fact, majority of the time, the tanning process the cow skin must go through to become leather involves so many toxins and chemicals that it diminishes the benefit of leather being so easily biodegradable.
What about vegan leather?
Vegan leather is a “leather” material that does not use animal skin or animal derivatives. You may have also heard of vegan leather referred to as faux leather, man-made leather, synthetic leather, fake leather and pleather. There are many different kinds of vegan leather but they can be categorised into 2 main types: synthetic and natural. Synthetic leather is plastic based and includes materials such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and PU (polyurethane). Natural leather is plant based and can be made from plants such as cork, mushroom, cactus, apple and pineapple.
The most common vegan leather is the plastic based leather such as PU. You may not know that PU is a flexible, resilient, durable, water-resistant and anti-bacterial material. Our DESYLLAS shoes are made using a high quality PU that is made in Italy. This material is the best for directly replacing leather because the function is very similar to animal leather and there are so many colour/print/texture options, just like animal leather. On the downside, PU is made using plastic and is not so biodegradable.
Where does this lead us?
It is generally not common knowledge that the production of synthetic leather is far less environmentally damaging than the production of leather, as you can see in the Higg Index graph below.
The Verdict?
Well, it’s safe to say that the production of animal leather has a far worse impact on the environment when compared to vegan leather. It’s important to recognise that that all materials will have a SOME negative impact, one way or another, but it’s essentially all about choosing the least harmful option for your needs!
We hope you feel empowered with this information, and you now feel as though you can make informed decisions. Perhaps next time you’re considering buying leather shoes, you’ll buy vegan shoes instead ;)
We’d love to hear from you so if you have any questions or comments feel free to drop them in the comment section below!
with love,
Helena from DESYLLAS