Spotted: Leather is one of the most energy-inefficient and destructive textiles. In addition to animal wealfare concerns, leather production involves large amounts of energy, land, and water, alongside the use of harmful chemicals – leading to deforestation and pollution. One way to reduce the environmental impact of the textile industry is to introduce more circularity into the production process. And this is exactly what startup ALT.Leather has done.
Unlike some other alternative leathers, bio-based ALT.Leather is not made from fossil fuel-based materials like PVC. Instead, the company used agricultural waste to develop a unique fibre with a structure that mimics the 3D webbing of animal leather, which helps to make the final product durable and strong.
The company’s founder, Tina Funder, told Springwise: “Our product contains zero petroleum plastic, zero animal products and is ethically made.” The Australian company also uses 100 per cent Australian ingredients, reducing emissions from transportation.
ALT.Leather recently closed an oversubscribed seed funding round, raising AU$1.1 million (around €667,000), exceeding the initial target of AU$750,000 (around €455,000). The round was led by investment firm Wollemi Capital Group.
Springwise is spotting more and more innovators making use of bio-based materials and textiles. These include a bio-based approach to leather recycling and textiles made from pineapple waste.
Design consultancy Matter has redesigned the Royal British Legion remembrance poppy to be created entirely of paper made from coffee cup waste and recycled wood fibres, the first change in the flower’s design for 28 years.
According to Matter, the paper poppy will reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent compared to the previous design, which had a paper leaf and petals held in place by a plastic stem and black circular centre.
The remembrance poppy has been redesigned to be made entirely from paper
Matter’s redesign aims to remain true to the original recognisable poppy but replaces all plastic elements with paper. The entire poppy can be recycled at home via household recycling collections.
It has been designed to be produced on a high-speed assembly line without the need for adhesives, with crease details on the paper’s surface that help to give the poppy a 3D shape.
The plastic-free poppy can be fastened by a pin or inserted into button holes and aims to encourage more people to support this year’s Poppy Appeal, an annual charity campaign organised by the Royal British Legion that raises money for veterans and their families experiencing injury, hardship or bereavement.
The paper was made from recycled materials
It will be available alongside remaining stocks of the previous poppy in the lead-up to Remembrance Day on 11 November.
“We didn’t want to simply reduce single-use plastic but to eliminate it completely, and we didn’t want to replace plastic parts with expensive and complicated bio-based plastics,” said Matter director John Macdonald.
“Paper offered a single-material solution that could be easily recycled, as well as offering a bold, elegant approach for the next generation of poppies.”
Matter created the poppy in collaboration with paper manufacturer James Cropper, which has made the paper for remembrance poppies since 1978.
James Cropper developed two bespoke papers for the new design, Poppy Green and Poppy Red, made from a combination of 50 per cent recycled fibres from the production of coffee cups and 50 per cent from recycled wood fibre.
The plastic-free poppy will be available for this year’s Poppy Appeal
“We’re proud to have designed a plastic-free poppy that will enable people to show their support for our Armed Forces community in a more sustainable way,” said Gary Ryan, executive director at The Royal British Legion.
“Matter has played a fundamental role in reducing the environmental impact of the new poppy whilst maintaining the iconic poppy design that the public can wear with pride.”
Earlier this year, former Apple designer Jony Ive revealed his redesign of the Red Nose Day nose for UK charity Comic Relief, which saw the iconic clown-style nose reimagined as a foldable paper sphere. In Australia, start-up Hoopsy has created a pregnancy test made from 99 per cent paper.
Spotted: Plastic is everywhere. In fact, as microplastics are found in more and more places – the bottom of the ocean, the food chain, and inside our bodies for example – concern over the use of plastics is growing. However, there are few products that can replicate plastic’s usefulness, especially as a topcoat on products such as leather and flooring. Until now, that is. Sustainable materials brand von Holzhausen has recently announced a new plastic-free topcoat that could replace the use of petroleum-based materials.
Called Liquidplant, the new customisable product is 100 per cent plant-based, petroleum-free, and completely biodegradable. The product is designed for use as a coating on products such as traditional and synthetic leather, paper, wood, plastic, and fabric.
The coating is made from sustainably grown materials, including corn sugar, castor oil, and flaxseed oil. It has similar qualities to traditional topcoats, including being flexible, as well as stain-, scratch-, and water-resistant. The company says Liquidplant can be used on its own or paired with von Holzhausen’s Terra Backing material. And at the end of its usable life, the products can be recycled into more Liquidplant.
Founded by former automotive designer Vicki von Holzhausen, the company has developed a number of vegan materials, including a bamboo-based leather, and leathers crafted from recycled consumer plastic. The company states its mission as replacing “all the animal leather in the world with non-animal leather. [It believes] in the power of plants and in transforming discarded materials into remarkable ones.”
Vegan leather is everywhere now, and its use is growing as the products become more sophisticated and luxurious. Springwise has spotted leather substitutes made from products as diverse as mycelium, fruit waste, and flowers.
Environmental charity A Plastic Planet has launched an online platform to help architects and designers source plastic-free materials for their projects and avoid the “minefield of misinformation” around more sustainable alternatives.
Called PlasticFree, the subscription-based service provides users with in-depth reports on more than 100 plastic alternatives, offering key insights into their properties, production and sourcing.
A Plastic Planet has launched the PlasticFree materials database
Part material library, part design tool, the platform also highlights case studies on how these materials are already being turned into products across five different continents and allows users to collate them into Pinterest-style mood boards for their projects.
The ultimate aim, according to A Plastic Planet, is to “help designers and business leaders eradicate one trillion pieces of plastic waste from the global economy by 2025”.
The platform features in-depth reports on over 100 plastic-free materials
“No designer on the planet wants to make branded trash,” the charity’s co-founder Sian Sutherland told Dezeen. “They did not go to design school and care about everything that they produce every single day for it to end up in a bin.”
“But I don’t think designers have been trained for what is expected of them today,” she added. “So we wanted to create an absolutely authoritative, unbiased, material-agnostic platform that designers can use to learn about materials and their systems.”
PlasticFree is the result of more than two years of research and development in collaboration with a 40-strong council of scientists, business leaders and industry figureheads including Stirling Prize-winner David Chipperfield, designer Tom Dixon and curator Aric Chen.
The website also highlights case studies of how they are being used across the world
In a bid to offer a reliable, trustworthy source of information, each material was carefully vetted by an “army” of scientific advisors based on an extensive data collection form and A Plastic Planet’s Plastic Free Standard, Sutherland explained.
“Designers want to be part of the solution but there is a minefield of misinformation out there,” she said. “It’s taken us two years to do all the research on these materials, to drill down and ask all the questions so that our audience doesn’t need to ask them.”
All this information is condensed into individual reports, summarising each material’s key traits, its stage of development and sustainable credentials such as water savings.
The reports highlight key facts such as the material’s price and sustainable credentials
Each profile also includes a list of key questions that designers will have to consider if they want to work with the material, such as whether it will be on the market in time or whether it needs to be integrated into a reusable product to offer emissions reductions.
“It’s about how we can empower designers by telling them what questions they should ask of a materials manufacturer,” Sutherland said.
“How can you push back against that brief that says: just use a recycled polymer or a bioplastic? How can you challenge a lifecycle analysis? Because I sit on those calls and I hear the complete bullshit that is spewed out all the time.”
PlasticFree’s database, which will be constantly updated, focuses on the sectors that currently use the most plastic – namely packaging and textiles, with buildings and construction set to be added later this year.
It features raw materials such as bamboo and cork, alongside more specific innovations such as Great Wrap’s potato-based cling film and Living Ink’s algae ink.
Some of these materials – like bioplastics and recycled plastics – are merely “transitional” and, according to Sutherland, represent “a foot on a better path” rather than a viable solution to plastic pollution.
Cork is among the raw materials featured
The real promise, she argues, lies in fossil-free “nutrient-based” materials such as Notpla’s edible seaweed packaging or Mirum plant leather, which are able to go back to the earth as nutrients.
“That is going to be the future of materials,” Sutherland said, “for everything from the houses we live in and the fabric we wear, to the products we buy and the packaging in which they’re sold.”
The Stories section houses educational editorial content
PlaticFree’s Stories section also houses more educational content on everything from clothing dyes to the “forever chemicals” in our plastics, in the hopes of pushing the wider systems-level changes that need to go along with this material transition.
“Above all, our focus is on system change, not just better materials,” Sutherland said.
“How can we have permanent packaging? How can we make things that are durable, that feel beautiful in your hand, that make you feel even fonder of them as they age? How can we get off this ever-moving conveyor belt of new?”
New materials will be added to the site regularly
Sutherland founded A Plastic Planet together with Frederikke Magnussen in 2017, with the aim of inspiring the world to “turn off the plastic tap”.
Since then, the charity has rallied both industry and policymakers behind its cause, creating the “world’s first” plastic-free supermarket aisle as well as working with the UN to realise a historic global treaty to end plastic waste.
