Apple Waste > Animal Skins
We already have leather alternatives made from mushrooms, pineapples, cork, corn, coconuts, cactus, and now? Apples, upgraded.
Danish company Beyond Leather Materials just launched Leap Flex, a new version of their apple-waste-based material that’s more flexible, more durable, and more adaptable. It bends, it stretches, it lasts, without blood, without chemicals, without turning anyone into a handbag.
Leap Flex is designed for curved furniture, tough conditions, and long life. It’s got an elongation rate of 130%, high tensile strength, and flex resistance tested to 50,000 cycles. It’s also got two new shades Burgundy and Macchiato Beige.
And unlike animal leather, Leap Flex doesn't rot unless you pump it full of formaldehyde. It doesn’t leach toxic chromium into waterways. It doesn’t require entire forests to be flattened or billions of animals to be killed. It’s just apple waste. Upcycled. Reinvented. Reimagined.
Beyond Leather’s shift to full-scale production last year means this isn’t just some fantasy, it’s happening. And their collaborations with companies like TAKT and Veshin are proof that the demand is there.
We never needed animal leather. We were just told we did. We were told it was “natural,” “durable,” a “by-product.” But there’s nothing natural about turning babies into calfskin boots. There’s nothing sustainable about ecosystems destroyed for grazing and waste lagoons killing rivers. And leather is not a by-product, it’s a profit centre, propping up the meat and dairy industries.
The environmental impact of leather begins long before tanning. Cows are raised for flesh, for milk, and for skin. This isn’t recycling. It’s repackaged violence.
And while the industry gets away with marketing skins as “luxury,” it conveniently outsources the dirtiest parts, dumping the human health risks onto poorer countries where workers breathe in carcinogens just so someone in London or LA can sit on a “premium” chair.
Leap Flex, and materials like it, don’t just offer a substitute. They expose the lie: that there’s no other way. That skin is necessary. That this death machine is just how things are.
But the reality is simpler. We have options. We’ve had them. And every time a company like Beyond Leather steps up, it’s another nail in the leather industry’s glossy, bloodstained coffin.
The future is plant-based, waste-reducing, bio-based, toxin-free, and stylish.
So the only question left is:
Why are we still wearing anyone?
No skin. No spin. Just the truth.