DESSERTO Vegan Leather
(Photo: Twitter @livekindlyco)

At the turn of the 21st century, the middle class has gained more buying power, which meant the supply must start to meet the demand: This included fast fashion, and among the staple faces in the industry is leather.

Leather has always been considered a top-tier luxury item: People still got to get their hands on leather bags, or leather boots, or leather jackets. Currently, global estimates of cows killed each year for the production of leather is 290 million.

Issues in the Leather Trade

At the present rate the fashion manufacturing is heading, analysts predict that by 2025, over 400 million of these animals must be slaughtered just to keep the fad alive.

There is also the issue of commodifying soft leather, which can only be manufactured by skinning a newborn calf, sometimes immediately after it is born.

Countries in North America and Europe have animal welfare laws that go against the manufacturing of these leather goods. Still, fashion corporations have instead turned to far-off factories like those in Asia to garner more production.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) discovered during an investigation in one of the leather suppliers in India that the workers physically abuse the cows sent to the slaughterhouse by rubbing chili peppers and tobacco into the animals' eyes.

In China, for example, it is not only cows that are used to make leather. In most other cultures, animals are domesticated and treated as pets, even family members, but there, animal welfare laws appear non-existent. And so, some of the leather in the global market can be from dog and cat skin. 

Those are the ethical issues so far, but what about the environment? Well, tanning leather is involved in a highly toxic, chemical process wherein the hide of an animal is stretched and soaked in carcinogenic chromium (VI).

Non-toxic alternatives to tanning leather include using vegetable dyes is a much slower process that can only delay factory production.

Usually, when leftover chromium and other dangerous compounds used in leather tanning are dumped carelessly, this can pollute the environment and endanger the factory workers. 

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Sustainable Alternative

Thankfully, there are already alternatives for leather production. Founders of DESSERTO Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez developed a plant-based fabric that served as an alternative to leather. The source? Cacti.

The project aimed first to find a plant that was both abundant and self-sufficient to meet the demands of production: This meant that the plant would not need much intervention, reducing the use of herbicides and pesticides, which they assure is entirely organic.

Adrián provides a thorough explanation of the process, starting by explaining that the cacti are raw material they grow themselves. There is no irrigation system for the plants since rainwater is already enough to sustain them.

He adds that after cutting the leaves they need from the mature cacti, they sun-dry them for three days, a natural process when compared to heating leather using gas in factories. And then, they process the material and use their patented Vegan Leather formula.

"We work hard on making DESSERTO available for everyone in order to help relieve the environmental problem," he says.

This initiative for sustainable development will hopefully pioneer the transition of global production into a more ecological one.