Plant-based fake Leather

[lpetrich]

Can This Tiny Midwestern Startup Become the Beyond Meat of Leather? | by Zara Stone | Marker - "Fashion designers, environmentalists, and car companies are desperate for someone to invent animal-free leather. This Peoria, Illinois upstart thinks it can."

Like a tourist arriving at the Eiffel Tower, this was the singular thing he had traveled thousands of miles to see: a mannequin draped in a sleek, shimmering gold evening gown. Under the spotlights, the material looked glossy, almost latex-like, but it’s about as far from latex as chemically possible. The dress — and Haverhals’s brown belt — were both made from Mirum, a plant-based leather substitute cooked up by Haverhals’s company, Natural Fiber Welding.

The home pages:
Natural Fiber Welding, Inc.
Home - Made With Mirum

Haverhals’s company is one of several startups competing to solve the fashion industry’s big sustainability problem. Fashion’s constant churn has created massive amounts of waste, accounting for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of industrial water pollution globally, according to sustainability organization, Global Fashion Agenda. If nothing changes, it’s on track to consume 25% of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.

As animal-free meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods tear through the food industry, taking consumers along with them, there’s been growing interest for animal-free leather. ...

But most faux leather has a dirty little secret — it’s an environmental nightmare. PVC, polyester, and polyurethane leather are made from petroleum, transformed into fibers through a process that spits carbon dioxide into the air. The materials can take hundreds of years to decompose and clog the oceans with small plastic particles. The animal-free holy grail? A faux leather that isn’t terrible for the planet.

Over the past five years, several startups have jumped into the race to create a plant-based leather, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. Each one is working on its own version of animal-free leather — ranging from converting mushrooms and pineapples to fermented yeast. But so far, one company has shown the most potential for scaling, and that’s the unlikely player in Peoria. Its secret ingredient: agricultural waste.

Which contains plant fibers that would otherwise have to be disposed of.

"There are about as many ways to make plant-based leather as there are plant-based leather startups."

Like mushroom-based and fruit-based.

"To make Mirum — named from the Latin word, miraculum, for miracle — Haverhals’s team combines agricultural waste such as cork powder (the dust leftover from cork processing), coconut fiber (harvested from the outer husk), and rubber." Then the fibers are welded together with a salt-based “magic pixie dust” solution.

It's thousands of times faster than how fast mushrooms can grow.

Ultimately, says Downs, the winner will largely be determined by quality and pricing. “The look and feel of real leather is crucial,” she says. That’s because plant-based leather isn’t just competing against real leather — it’s also competing against plastic leather, which has gotten much better at imitating the original. “It’s not the pleather of the ‘80s any more,” Downs says. “The materials aren’t good for the environment, but from a quality standpoint, synthetic leathers today are amazing.” Downs says Natural Fiber Welding’s product shows promise: “There is a really nice look to it,” she says.

All the animal-free leather startups claim to be price competitive with both leather and pleather, but the reality is, they still have a long way to go. ...