Development of a flexible and breathable PLA-based film as an eco-friendly alternative to animal leather

Leather manufacturing is a by-product of the meat and dairy industries, and leather can come from any animal. More than a billion animals are slaughtered every year for their skins. But, the most popular type of skin used is coming from cow, calf and buffalo, and accounts for 64% of leather. Turning skin into leather requires many steps, chemicals and generate a significant amount of waste. It is not surprising that the leather industry is consider as a cruel, inhuman and polluting business. Fortunately, leather can be obtained using different animal-free sources of material (e.g. plastics, apple fibers, pineapple, tree bark and cork). Most of the time those animal-free leathers are referred to as artificial, synthetic, faux or vegan leather. Among plastic-based leather, polyurethane (PU) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) are the most used ones. However, those plastics are still oil-based ones and, overall, the artificial leather still represents one-third of the footprint of whole animal leather industry. This project aims at developing new fully bio-composite derived from renewable resource with comparable flexibility, breathability and feeling to genuine leather.

Faculty Supervisor:

Saïd Elkoun

Student:

Partner:

Gestion Dryad Inc

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Université de Sherbrooke

Program: