In France, an entrepreneurial couple is repurposing mangos and bananas to produce a slaughter-free leather alternative.
Loïc Debrabander and Anaëlle Picavet launched VegSkin because of a lack of sustainable leathers, telling the publication 20 minutes that while animal-free leather does exist, it is often made from polyurethane or polyvinyl chloride—both of which come from petroleum feedstocks. “We were looking for alternatives to leather,” Debrabander said in the interview. “But we discovered that these alternatives were not that clean.”
The pair evaluated beets, mushrooms, and potatoes. “It didn’t work. [Then] with apples, we started to have something convincing,” Debrabander added. Ultimately, bananas and mangoes produced the best vegan material.
To date, the company has used 100 tons of damaged or over-ripe bananas and mangoes to make several thousand meters of biodegradable leather. Durability and water-restance are similar to cow leather.