Plastic in Vegan Leather: What’s Hiding in Your “Green” Accessories?

Plastic in vegan leather is often hidden behind claims of cruelty-free, ethical or plant-based fashion. Although animal-free alternatives can avoid many of the harms associated with conventional leather, their materials and environmental impacts vary considerably.

Vegan leather is a broad term applied to many different materials which are both animal-free and aesthetically as well as functionally similar to leather made from skin. The broad use of this term is what makes it difficult to know which options are actually best. Vegan leather is often made from either of these two plastic polymers: polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC); these are the most commonly used polymers due to their wrinkled texture which helps to give the effect of real leather. As well as these synthetic materials though, vegan leather can also be made from more natural resources, including pineapple leaves, cork, apple peels, and recycled plastic. Understanding the amount and type of plastic in vegan leather is therefore essential when comparing different materials.

Despite the raw materials used to produce vegan leather sounding nothing like what goes into real leather products, this has kept growing in the past few years, meaning that well-made vegan-leather products can often be mistaken for the real thing! When assessing the sustainability credentials of these materials though, we need to look at its raw properties and how it's made: not all vegan leather is created the same way. Some are made from plant-based materials, while others are created from artificial products. But, are vegan-leather alternatives actually better for our environment than the real thing? It depends.

Plastic-based vegan leather

Plastic in vegan leather commonly comes from polyurethane, known as PU, or polyvinyl chloride, known as PVC. These fossil-fuel-derived materials can imitate the texture and appearance of animal leather, but they also raise concerns around emissions, durability, microplastics and disposal.

Faux leather had a big success in the 2010s when the material got rebranded into “vegan leather” or “pleather” and carried the connotation of a ‘cruelty-free’ material. Many widely available pleathers and vegan leathers are made primarily from plastic, particularly PU or PVC.

Like all plastics, PU and PVC are derived from petroleum or natural gas. Extracting fossil fuels to manufacture synthetic vegan leather comes at a high cost to both the environment and human health. Not just that, but at the end of their lives, these materials will eventually either get dumped in a landfill where they’ll leach harmful chemicals for decades; be incinerated, releasing carbon into the atmosphere; or disintegrate into microplastic pollution that ends up in our oceans, drinking water, and soils. 

Although these materials are marketed as “vegan”, many are difficult to recycle or compost and can create serious end-of-life problems.

Plant-based vegan leather

We've all heard of the plant-based leather alternatives taking on the leather industry in the past couple of years: from apple skin, mushrooms, pineapple leaves, to mango and orange peels. These raw materials are all saved from waste and transformed into leather-looking material. While this sounds great and a fantastic alternative to plastic-based or animal derived leather, the truth is that most of these plant-based leathers on the market still use some plastic resin, glue, or coating as a shortcut to meet the performance threshold. In fact, the ratio of plant to plastic in these materials,  can be as much as 80-20 or as little as 30-70, depending on the company and the brand. This means that plastic in vegan leather can still be significant even when a product is marketed using ingredients such as apples, cactus or pineapple leaves.

Using plant inputs (especially agricultural by-products and food waste) can make the supply chain more climate-friendly and environmentally responsible. However, it’s not clear that plant-plastic hybrids are any more sustainable than pleather once you take into account the end-of-life impacts. 

Plant-plastic hybrid vegan leather

Combining natural fibres or agricultural waste with synthetic coatings can make recycling and composting difficult. The presence of plastic in vegan leather may prevent otherwise biodegradable ingredients from safely returning to the soil.

The future of vegan leather

For all brands, manufacturers and designers committed to sustainable fashion, the industry standard for “plant-based leather” must be 100% biobased, or in other words, plastic-free. We’ve talked about it before, but MIRUM seems to be the most exciting entrant into the field of plant-based leather. The manufacturer describes MIRUM as plastic-free and bio-based, with no synthetic coating. Its end-of-life performance should still be assessed according to the finished product and local disposal conditions. You can check out all the facts and our thoughts on this material here, as well as a few brands that have already adopted it into their collections.

The future of leather alternatives depends on greater transparency about material composition, durability and end-of-life options. Reducing plastic in vegan leather while supporting animal-free, lower-impact innovation could lead to stronger alternatives for fashion. Materials such as MIRUM are promising because the manufacturer describes them as plant-based, plastic-free and 100% bio-based, although every material should still be assessed through transparent lifecycle evidence.

Do you check whether vegan leather contains plastic before buying it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[all images sourced on canva.com

Info sourced on harpersbazaar.com, collectivefashionjustice.com and naturalfiberwelding.com]