Integrating materials innovation and policy challenges for leather alternatives

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Integrating materials innovation and policy challenges for leather alternatives
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Nature Sustainability (2026)Cite this article

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The leather industry is at a pivotal moment on its path towards sustainability. Although many bio-based leather alternatives can reduce environmental impact, we need clear definitions of such alternatives to guide materials innovations that truly bring them into the mainstream, sustainable market, as highlighted in a recent court ruling.

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Fig. 1: Preparation pathways, advantages and limitations of traditional leather, synthetic leather and bio-derived vegan leather alternatives.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22478264) and the International Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation project of Sichuan Province (25GJHZ0078). This work was performed in part at Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering of Ministry of Education of Sichuan University, which is partially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SCU2025D014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Biomass Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Leather Chemistry and Engineering of Ministry of Education, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Fengteng Zhang, Jiajing Zhou, Han Xu, Chunhua Wang & Wei Lin

  2. National Engineering Laboratory for Clean Technology of Leather Manufacture, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Jiajing Zhou, Chunhua Wang & Wei Lin

  3. Department of Chemistry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    To Ngai

Authors

  1. Fengteng Zhang
  2. Jiajing Zhou
  3. Han Xu
  4. Chunhua Wang
  5. To Ngai
  6. Wei Lin

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to To Ngai or Wei Lin.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Zhang, F., Zhou, J., Xu, H. et al. Integrating materials innovation and policy challenges for leather alternatives. Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01759-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01759-7

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