Self-dyeing vegan leather made by genetically engineered bacteria
Genetically engineered bacteria have been designed to produce self-dyeing, vegan, plastic-free leather. The work, carried out by UK-based researchers, could offer a more sustainable alternative to traditional leather and the associated chemical dyeing processes.
‘By 2050, after food and construction, materials for textiles and fabrics will be the third biggest polluter in the world – fashion and textiles already contribute more to carbon emissions than all of aviation and shipping combined,’ explains Tom Ellis, a synthetic biologist at Imperial College London who led the project. ‘In terms of carbon use, by far the worst material used in the fashion industry, is leather – the amount of land use and CO2 and methane emissions associated with farming cows and then producing leather is crazy.’
‘Then on top of that, dying leather a different colour and cleaning it in a way that it becomes the material you want is also terrible,’ he adds. ‘The tanning process uses chromium and to get that black colour – the most popular colour for leather – you have to use azo dyes and that creates a huge amount of wastewater and chemical residue.’
