Natural fabrics are essentially composed of cellulose (a polysaccharide), such as cotton, or proteins, such as wool.
So any source of these materials or others with similar properties, such as chitin from crustacean shells (the second most abundant polysaccharide in nature after cellulose), is a potential raw material. Among proteins, options such as milk residues are being explored. In the case of cellulose, there are long-established alternatives like rayon or viscose, which have a history of more than a century and are derived from wood pulp. Newer alternatives include modal and Lyocell, the latter of which is made without a toxic compound used in the production of rayon.
Similarly, plant fibres derived from lotus, seaweed or corn are presented as greener options than cotton because they consume fewer resources. However, when it comes to not being dependent on a specific crop, an interesting option is to use food waste, or the part of the plant that is not used. Some examples are banana petioles (the stalk that connects the leaf to the stem), pineapple leaves, orange peel and pulp, and coffee grounds.
Some companies are already producing these fabrics: Italy’s Orange Fiber uses part of the 700 million tonnes of waste from the Sicilian orange juice industry. Spain’s Carmen Hijosa created Piñatex, an innovative non-woven textile that imitates leather and is made from waste pineapple leaf fibre. It is marketed by Ananas Anam and used by brands such as Nike.
This is one of the materials driving the vegan leather market; apart from the ethical objections some people have to natural leather, the truth is that this material also has a more costly environmental footprint than its main artificial substitute: petroleum-derived polyurethane. To replace petrochemical leatherette (fake leather), new leather-like materials are being made from fungi grown on sawdust or agricultural waste, among other plant sources such as tree bark, corn, cactus, apple peel, flowers or even kombucha, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast used to ferment the beverage of the same name.