This is exactly how I feel about "vegan leather" https://twitter.com/1TeresaAnderson/status/1380171671143858183

I guess it's that time of year when I rant about "vegan leather", which is a scam to make you feel good about buying something worse for the environment than actual leather.

Sellers also love to call it "PU Leather". The PU stands for Polyurethane. Sounds a lot less friendly when they don't abbreviate it, right?

And because so many sellers abuse the word "leather" in their euphemisms for plastic, it becomes very difficult to search online for genuine leather goods. Because the search results are always full of the crappy alternatives.

To illustrate, here are two bags that I've carried around for roughly the same length of time. Left: "vegan" (lol) polyurethane. Right: genuine leather. Both have aged, but only one is falling apart.

The "vegan leather" delaminates and flakes off. In 100 years, it will still be plastic sitting in a landfill.
The real leather? It will biodegrade eventually, but it will also be useful for decades. Longer if it's well-cared for.

And until the ENTIRE world stops eating meat, leather will still exist in mass quantities as a byproduct. Why create toxic petroleum products when a more durable alternative already exists?
(Marketing)

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I move toward producing my own bag designs. I'm not looking forward to all the well-intentioned people complaining that I choose real leather over plastic alternatives. But for me personally, it's an obvious choice.