Decanter had an article last week about an Amsterdam company creating new vegan trainers from wine leather. Have you ever heard of wine leather? I know I hadn’t, so I decided to do some research. In this article, I’ll share with you what I found.
What Is Wine Leather?
Decanter says that wine leather, which is also called grape leather, is “a simulated leather made from grape skin and seed fibres, currently provided by organic Italian winemakers.” Essentially, the leather is made from the leftover waste of wine production. How cool is that? A vegan product that helps get rid of waste.
How Does Wine Leather Feel?
According to the experts, wine leather is soft, smooth, stable, 100% sustainable and can be recycled. And it feels a lot like leather.
How Can You Use It?
As wearables! Decanter highlights Mercer Amsterdam, a company that is partnering with Vegea to make wine-leather trainers under the name W3RD Wine Pack.
Apparently, shoes are just the start of what they plan to make. Reset says that “Vegea’s wine leather isn’t just suited for the fashion industry – for making clothes, shoes and bags and accessories. It could also be used for upholstery and car seat covers. They’re already working with different textile companies to develop various kinds of materials of different weights, strengths, elasticity levels, finishes and textures.”
About Vegea
Vegea was founded in 2016 in Milan, with the aim to develop eco-sustainable products. “We develop plant-based alternatives to fully synthetic oil-derived materials for fashion, furniture, packaging, automotive & transportation. Sustainability is one of the pillars of our social responsibility policies and is based on production processes that use vegetable raw materials, recycled materials and bio-based polymers. We valorize agro-industry biomass and residues as high-value feedstocks, and we transform them into new materials for fashion, furniture, packaging, automotive & transportation. In particular, in collaboration with Italian wineries, we have developed a process for the valorization of wine waste…No toxic solvents, heavy metals and dangerous substances for humans and the environment are involved in the production process.”
According to DAN & MEZ, the project is still in the start-up phase and the planned industrialization process is expected to take place in 2022.
Wow! Wouldn’t you love to invest in this company?
How Much Can Be Produced?
The founder of Vegea explained to Decanter in 2017 that the 26 billion liters of wine produced annually provide an estimated seven billion kilos of grape marc, from which they could potentially produce three billion square meters of wine leather.
I hope you are as excited as I am about this new invention. If you know anything else about it, I would love for you to share your information with us here.
Cheers!
