Do you recognize what's in the jar below?
▲ Image from: Unsplash
That's right, apple juice. Where will the remaining residue go after the apple is juiced? Turned into food waste?
No, these apple scraps have other places to go, and they can also be turned into shoes and bags.
Apple pomace is a misplaced "leather" ingredient
Shoes and bags are still made of animal skins?
Pattern opens!
The raw materials for making leather have slowly emerged a lot of plant-based, they are also known as Vegan Leather (vegan leather).
Vegan Leather refers to leather products that are 100% free of animal ingredients and animal footprints in terms of manufacturing materials and production processes, and do not undergo any animal testing.
Now on the market, there are grapes, pineapples, mushrooms...
Especially mushrooms, in addition to eating, these two years are in full swing in other industries. Big brands such as lululemon, Hermès and Adidas have launched "mushroom leather" products made from mushroom "mycelium".
▲ Hermès's "mushroom packet", image from Robb Report
In addition to these plants, as a by-product of the apple juice industry, the "apple leather" caused by apple residues such as cores and peels that are not needed to make juices has gradually become the "dark horse" in Vegan Leather.
Brands such as Sylven New York, SAMARA and Good Guys Don't Wear Leather have Apple leather products called "Apple Leather" or "AppleSkin".
They gradually adopted apple leather as one of their main materials.
▲Image from: SAMARA
Industrial-scale apple juice production leaves a paste-like pulp (composed of cellulose fibers) after the apple juice is squeezed.
These brands convert residues such as pits and peels from apple juice from Europe (mostly from Italy) into pulp, which is then mixed with organic solvents and polyurethanes and bonded to the fabric to make a leather-like fabric.
▲ Image courtesy of Sylven New York
Structurally, "apple leather" has many of the same characteristics as animal leather, but its production process has nothing to do with animals, and there are small advantages that other plant-based leathers do not have.
For example, it is closer to the excellent feel of the leather.
Image courtesy of Good Guys Don't Wear Leather
Salima Visram, founder of SAMARA, has partnered with a factory in Europe to produce apple leather for her bag collection.
According to Salima's experiment, the natural thick apple leather is particularly suitable for making bags and shoes.
Mushroom leather, which has been on fire in recent years, can adjust the weight or feel of the finished product by controlling the way the mushroom grows, and mushrooms that can be quickly regenerated are more readily available raw materials than apple by-products.
▲ Image courtesy of Samara
However, the texture of mushroom leather is slightly different, and not all designers like it.
"We tried mushroom leather, pineapple leather and coconut leather, but it didn't feel as good as we wanted," says Salima.
Some people say that garbage is a misplaced resource.
In this way, apple residues that may become kitchen waste are also misplaced "leather" raw materials.
What kind of leather should we use?
From apple scraps to shoe bags, what has leather experienced over the years?
As we all know, people have a long history of using leather, and most of them use animal leather.
But with the progress of society, the development of civilization, the protection of animal rights, environmental protection, sustainability... For various reasons, more and more people are beginning to use less or even no animal leather products.
▲ Image courtesy of Eco Warrior Princess
As a result, another industry has been born – Vegan Leather.
As mentioned earlier, Vegan Leather is 100% free of animal ingredients and animal footprints in the manufacturing materials and production process, and does not perform any animal testing.
In short, it is an Animal-friendly leather.
Image courtesy of Green Matters
However, being animal-friendly does not mean being environmentally friendly.
More common artificial leathers such as PVC and PU can also be regarded as Vegan Leather in a broad sense (the production process is indeed not involved in animals), but their raw materials come from oil, and the production process also produces many substances that are harmful to the environment.
▲Image from: Senreve
Animal leather can be dispensed with, but it cannot be taken to the other extreme.
Is there no way to be both environmentally friendly and animal-friendly, and still meet people's demand for leather?
Of course, there is a way to make more environmentally friendly plants into leather, and at present, the results are quite good.
But the birth of every new thing is often not too smooth, and the same is true of plant-based leather, mushroom leather growth cycle blocks, and the quality is controllable, but the feel is not as good as apple leather.
▲ Image courtesy of MycoWorks
What about apple leather that feels superior? Is it only an advantage? Not quite.
"Apple leather" wants to rise, and there are many difficulties
For the apple juice manufacturing industry, these apple residues are waste, and many resources are wasted every year.
"Apple leather" makes apple residues into a bio-based leather substitute, which is also a secondary utilization.
However, it may not be as environmentally friendly as you might think.
Take Sylven New York's apple leather sneakers, which, in addition to apple leather, also have linings made from wheat and corn by-products, soles made from corn husks and sap, and organic cotton laces.
In addition to these organic ingredients, apple leather shoes also contain 50% polyurethane (PU), after all, shoes also need a fabric backing to support the weight of the body.
In other words, chemicals are still inevitable in today's production process.
In terms of the existing production process, only about 20-30% of the materials for apple leather products are apples.
And how much pollution will be generated in the production process is also unknown.
The official website page of the Good Guys Don't Wear Leather brand has this passage:
AppleSkin materials are produced by recycling this discarded scrap and turning it into a final material. The precise process is a trade secret, but we know that cellulose effectively "fills" the amount of raw material needed to make AppleSkin. Less raw material means fewer natural resources are extracted from the planet, emissions are lower, and energy consumption is lower throughout the supply chain.
It can be seen that pollution in the production process is still an unavoidable problem.
However, the obstacles encountered in the rise of "Apple Leather" are more than that.
Brands that own Apple leather goods are almost unable to fulfill large orders because there are not so many raw materials.
Most of the Apple by-products currently being procured come from Europe, where recycling infrastructure better handles food waste. And the factory can produce a limited number of dyes, and there are fewer dyes to choose from.
As the saying goes, "it is difficult for a woman to cook without rice", without raw materials, where is the bag?
Production is limited, which usually means higher costs.
Currently, products made from apple leather are generally more expensive than non-apple leather products.
For example, the production cost of SAMARA apple leather bags is 20-30% higher than that of other vegan leather products (the consumer price can even be seen to be twice as high).
Ashley Kubley, head of the Fashion Technology Center at the University of Cincinnati, said: "Ninety-nine percent of leather is made from by-products of the food industry, which is a symbiotic relationship. To this end, many meat processing plants have tanneries on site to integrate processes, a relationship that saves around 7.3 million tonnes of biological waste from landfills each year.
That said, if you want to produce apple leather products on a large scale, the industry must also change.
As an industrial product, apple leather is an ideal compromise between environmental friendliness and animal friendliness.
But as a new thing, if you want to develop and grow, there are also problems that need to be solved urgently.
While apple leather isn't perfect at the moment, it represents a new possibility: quality leather products and eco-friendly and sustainable products may be able to do both.