Apart from the ethical concerns, creating goods from animal skins has a huge negative impact on the environment, especially when it comes to deforestation. Additionally, turning skin into leather requires a toxic brew of chemicals—including mineral salts, coal-tar derivatives, formaldehyde, oils, dyes, and finishes, some of them cyanide-based, making the end result unable to biodegrade the way it would otherwise. But just how much does choosing that vegan leather bag affect sustainability? According to the Environmental Profit & Loss, a sustainability report developed by Kering in 2018, the impact of any kind of vegan-leather production is about a third lower than animal skin leather. What makes vegan goods even more sustainable is when they utilize plant leather as well as the PU materials, like cactus leather or Pinatex pineapple leather. 

What is Upcycling?