Vegan Leather from Agricultural Waste: Exploring Sustainable and Cruelty-Free Alternatives

The fashion industry is a multi-trillion US-dollar business, and leather is one of the animal products used for textiles, bags, and footwear. Even though durable, cow leather causes ethical, social, and environmental issues. Leather tanneries cause eutrophication, chemical release, water scarcity, and global warming. Arsenic, a common tannery chemical, is known to cause lung cancer. Due to environmental, social, and health issues, the fashion industry is under pressure to investigate other sustainable materials, and vegan leather has a promising future. This article summarizes various plant-based substrates and food waste that can be used to make vegan leather much cleaner and less polluting than conventional leather production. Sustainable biomaterials like plants and microbes are used to create plant-based leather. It helps reduce textile waste because it is biodegradable and environmentally beneficial. Natural latex, pineapple, mushrooms, jellyfish, and bacterial cellulose are some common sources of bio-leather. Mushroom leather, or mycelium leather, is another alternative to animal-based leather. With textile development moving at the current pace, it will be soon that many more organic-based materials will be fully biodegradable and used in the fashion and textile industry.