From landfill to leather alternative

Turning leftover apples into a leather alternative seems like a crazy idea, one might say even impossible. It’s no easy task indeed, but impossible? Not at all. Waste has a lot of value and potential to offer if we dare to think big. Let us introduce you to Leap’s main raw material: #applewaste.

Apple waste represents a huge untapped resource. Approximately 25% of the fruit goes to waste during pressing. It is estimated that a shocking 3,000,000 tons of apple waste is generated every year. Can you even imagine that mountain of apple pulp?

Despite the fact that a very small fraction of apple pomace is utilized, there are some ways to give it a useful afterlife. The possibilities are broad, ranging from composting, producing biofuel, and biochemical compounds to utilizing apple waste as an additive to food products and beverages.

Leftover Apples, alias Leap

Of course, for us, the most obvious use of apple waste is to turn it into a high-value leather alternative.?It took a lot of experimenting, trials, and errors to come up with an end product that can be a sustainable alternative to leather. It took even more research and development to create Leap as you know it today. Our goal was to show the world that a seemingly worthless resource can be turned into a high-value product, and by doing so, we can change one of the most polluting industries into a more sustainable one.

By now we know that in the fashion industry, up to 80% of the environmental footprint comes from raw materials. That is why we should start looking at and treasure what we have at hand – like waste. Apple waste deserves to be treated as equal to virgin materials or even superior to them, even in industries where you did not expect to see waste.

Virgin fabrics do not equal high quality or high fashion anymore, in fact, they are often unnecessary. Whereas being upcycled brings an additional value to a material.

We believe that #upcycling is the way forward.