“materials have expanded from the once radical vegan leather to include a whole bowl’s worth of fruit and vegetable-based alternatives, from apple to grape, pineapple, banana, even cactus. You only need to look at the continuing rise of brands like Veja – whose vegan leather sneakers have become ubiquitous among climate-conscious suburbanites – to see why bigger brands are worried.
But amid all these competing claims, it can be hard to know which of these new products are actually better for the planet, versus which just sound better. “Vegan leather” and “fruit leathers” are just plastics – for a fact that led the Portuguese government to ban the term in 2022”
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/sustainable-zero-carbon-sneakers