cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4051055
This is to help a friend find things for gifts for vegans in their life and so on. Mentioned here https://hexbear.net/post/3987758
Shoes are a gigantic problem when it comes to no plastic vegan clothing, pretty much everything is made of plastic when it comes to shoes. Rubber soles can often be mixed with plastic, and same is true with the so called plant leathers, which are merely a marketing gimmick.
Upon diving deeply on leather replacements, I've found that almost all 'plant' leathers are only 35% of the plant it claims to be. It does in fact change the quality and feel of the material, however, its still mostly fucking plastic. All of these companies doing these various leathers claim to be innovators saving the environment, but they all use the same fundamental process to mix plants into their plastic leather, hence the same percentage.
This includes:
Apple leather
Mushroom leather
Cork leather
Cactus leather
Pineapple leather
This all points to the idea that this is just bazinga stuff currently and a fad liberals use to make themselves feel better. The only options that immediately spring to mind that aren't plastic are certain kinds of canvas, cotton, and (non vegan) leather shoes which seem to be the least plastic if ordered custom with wooden soles. Most canvas and cotton shoes all look the same and aren't particularly feminine and many use plastic tainted rubber soles, laminates, and glue, so the search continues.
Desserto, the company who makes cactus leather, seems to sport a lofty claim that their more pure and new samples of cactus leather are now 90% cactus, and 10% PU. This is a much more sensible ratio, but I cannot find information on anyone that actually sells this magical material.
Next up on the search: MIRUM rubber leather seems to be promising. It sports a claim that it is 100% untainted-by-plastic natural rubber (unlike many shoe soles and tires). Rubber farming is of course an environmentally intensive process for many reasons, but it technically is a carbon sink, technically is biodegradable, and if done properly, it could be good. I will be digging into this next. If it looks good, then there will be a struggle about finding a place that sells it in a US womens in size 12+. Rubber obviously has a very intense history of imperialism and in the present so... I'm very doubtful of the ethics of this. But I will dig.
This is very interesting, thank you for sharing your journey!
I'm surprised about mushroom leather having a plastic component, I really thought that was just straight mushroom mycelium. Can you share where you discovered this?
In general with all of these products, you can see companies using weasel words
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They say things like '100% mushroom leather'. Usually, they say if something is polyurethane or not and any of the composite materials. If they don't mention all the constituent parts (e.g. glue, rubber, etc) they are being very suspicious.
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Some sites are honest about it. Look at this mushroom shoe here. It says "Upper: 60% Fungus | 40% glass and recycled PET manmade leather". PET is plastic.
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One of the producers of mushroom leather claims that its 100% vegetable. However, they also recommend post market laminating, which means infusing it with plastic. But because you can order it yourself allegedly pure, you could send it to a cobbler to make you a shoe from it without plastic, assuming their claims are correct.
Fundamentally, these alternative leathers do reduce the carbon output of the products, however, if your concerns are reducing microplastics (particularly from soft materials undergoing friction! those get in your lungs easily) in your home and so on, then thats not gonna work. I will say that the mushroom leather and cactus leather ones seem to be the least bullshit ones from that list. From what I can tell, people generally also feel like mushroom leather can tear and have issues with it somewhat easily, its probably not the best choice for footwear, but it might be good for other applications.
Desserto (cactus leather) and Mirum (rubber leather) have companies that explain exactly how their process works and what exactly the material is made of, so while many people selling these products are lying, the actual producers aren't. The most notable thing about mirum is that it doesn't seem to require any significant post market laminating, and is very durable. So everything there is crazy expensive but you might actually be getting what you pay for.
Here's an example of another website that lists each constituent product each thing is made of. It does a lot of fluff about how great and sustainable they are then they list PET and PU lmfao. Pinetex is transparently PU on their site btw. In general for purses and so on it would be best to look for canvas offerings.
This site claims to be 100% plastic free for their purses and so on which is a hard claim and not jerking people around at least. But you gotta be willing to buy a purse for 150-300 dollars. If they made shoes for 150 that would actually be reasonable for a custom shoe.
Thanks for all of this info! I am trying to deplastify my life and there are a few tough point, this being one of them.
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