Apples, pineapples, grapes, corn… no, these aren’t ingredients for a fruit salad. These are what the MoEa sneakers are made from. Using a unique technology that turns fruit into footwear, MoEa is ushering in an era of vegan leather that’s just as good as the real deal. Why? Because these plant-based leathers emit 89% less carbon than regular leather… and they help us deal with our massive food-waste problem too.
Designers: Achille Gazagnes, Benoit Habfast & Simon de Swarte
It’s easy to dismiss vegan leathers as some sort of ‘gimmick’, although at scale, leather production has an undeniably ugly impact. Animal breeding accounts for over 10% of all global carbon emissions, and leather tanning results in tonnes of toxic chemicals making their way into our soil and water. Moreover, slaughtering an animal for making a shoe seems a little like overkill if you ask me. The obvious alternative footwear material, plastic, has a reputation that precedes it. Aside from being virtually impossible to recycle, plastic footwear will erode over time, causing microparticles to enter our ground, air, water, and eventually, our food cycle.
MoEa believes they have a better alternative that knocks two birds with one stone. Not only do they replace the traditional leather and plastic with bio-materials, but they rely on food-waste like grape pulp from the Italian wine industry, pineapple leaves from the Philippines fruit industry, non-edible corn from the American corn industry, and unassuming cactus leaves from Mexico. Turning waste into raw materials, MoEa bind these fruit and plant fibers with cotton, or blend them with bio-polyurethane to create a new family of biomaterials that have a measurably lower impact on the environment. They look and feel just like leather, while being breathable, recyclable, and as an added bonus, cruelty-free.
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