Special report
Could a hybrid of traditional and fungus- grown leather offer a sustainable solution?
“Leather is a super sustainable material because of its longevity… we could create shoes with leather in constructions that last longer,” van Enter argues. When we look at end-of-life for leather, you find options such as leather recycling, but this requires grinding up the leather and adding a binder. During this process, the unique features of leather – such as breathability – are lost, van Enter says.
“Leather is a super sustainable material because of its longevity… we could create shoes with leather in constructions that last longer.”
Nicoline van Enter
This is where innovation could create new opportunities for leather, particularly in optimising the longevity of leather. As van Enter puts it: “Can we not use some of the new alternative material technologies, such as those derived from collagen, to create new binders that can fuse pieces of leather together and create a new skin?” Van Enter also believes that another benefit would come at the product’s end-of-life, where the materials could be retrieved with the help of lab-grown leather alternatives – describing it as though it’s a rebirth of sorts.
Offcuts could be given a new purpose through using biotechnology to bind them back into skins. Or perhaps biotechnology could be used to put a grain back onto split leather, van Enter muses.
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New opportunities All of this is uncharted territory. No one has clear answers on what could be possible or what makes sense to do. What is clear, however, is there needs to be joint research and development to explore new options. Ultimately, leather innovation will depend on the ability to adopt real out-of-the-box thinking. The industry has produced leather in the same way for centuries. There has been some incorporation of new technologies along the way, but the basic process has remained essentially the same. But could there be a new way?
There may be ways to use new materials to expand opportunities for real leather or new techniques to use raw hides, such as a collagen-based glue, that could be used to fuse leather pieces together. Plant-based coatings for leather are another area ripe for innovation, according to van Enter. “Today’s leather coatings are plastic –PU– and what we really need are good plant-based coatings.”
It is also possible to envision using lab-grown plant- based materials to repair blemishes and scars in natural hides. This could minimise or even eliminate hides that have bites, scratches or marks going to waste. Alternative materials, such as those grown from mycelium, still need to be tanned. This also presents another opportunity for the leather industry. In fact, an article discussing alternative materials in the September 2022 issue of Leather International noted this fact. The preference for developers of such materials would be to work with tanners who already have great expertise, but they could go it alone if tanners balk.
Leather International /
www.leathermag.com
Cheng Wei/
Shutterstock.com
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