Photo by ttps://www.vegeacompany.com/
Vegan Leather
The humble grape is a truly wondrous fruit, providing humanity with fruit juice, wine, balsamic vinegar, and, of course, leather for shoes or jackets.
And no, that wasn’t a misprint.
The Italian architecture and furniture designer Gianpiero Tessitore, working with the University of Florence, has co-developed a new type of ‘leather’ made from the stalks, skins and seeds from grapes, known as pomace.
This nutrient rich organic mix is often used as a fertilizer, but Tessitore and researcher Francesco Merlino have discovered that pomace is also ideal for producing a fabric that is very similar to leather.
Tessitore patented the production process in 2016 and founded the company Vegea, which has dedicated itself to researching and producing sustainable materials from biopolymers for the textile industry ever since.
Vegea’s so-called ‘wine leather' feels like the real thing, but it also offers a host of other advantages. It requires no water to produce, unlike real leather, which has a vast water footprint, and can cause pollution if the production is not done according to stringent environmental rules.
Tanning leather requires large amounts of toxic chemicals, that can both pollute waterways and sicken workers. Finally, no animals are harmed in the production of wine leather.
“I think that separation and enhancement of the by-products of the winery industry, such as skins and seeds, are important imperatives for sustainability," said Tessitore in an interview with LTEconomy.
"VEGEA’s process transforms what represents waste in one sector, into a value-added raw material in another sector. And we do it without using toxic pollutants, without any waste of water. That means doing ‘circular economy’!”
Wine leather can be used for clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, seat covers and upholstery, and provides a sustainable way to dispose of the byproduct of 27 billion litres of wine a year.