Eco friendly alternative to leather – water-based polyurethane

In the past, the only alternative to real leather for jackets and coats was 100% synthetic leather generically referred to as polyurethane or ‘PU’. The polyurethane vegan leather fabric is very similar in appearance and texture to natural leather but it does not contain any animal products. While it is preferable to real leather, and its manufacture needs to comply with standards of the EU and other countries, polyurethane is not yet a fabric that can can be called sustainable or eco-friendly.

The PU fabric for faux/vegan leather is made by the coating a synthetic base fabric (such as polyester or nylon) with a chemical compound paste and then drying it. The polyurethane coating is applied to a single side of the base fabric and it makes the fabric water resistant, light weight and flexible.

In some sense, the more correct term is ‘PU coated fabric’ because the actual fabric component is the underlying synthetic polyester or nylon.

However, it is not an environmentally friendly paste or process. This is mainly because the coating paste has very high levels of the toxic solvent DMF (dimethyl formamide). When emitted during traditional PU processing, the solvent eventually becomes greenhouse gas.

Fortunately since 2017, KAIYUE TECH have been technological innovations leading to the development of alternative leather fabrics eliminating DMF and which are sustainable and eco-friendly. One of these innovations is water-based PU (WBPU) and it is the fabric which our customer has switched to.