Most vegan leather is plastic. The two most common types, polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are petroleum-based polymers applied as coatings over a fabric backing. When you pick up a vegan leather jacket or handbag at a typical retailer, you’re almost certainly holding a plastic product, even if the label doesn’t spell that out.
A small but growing number of plant-based alternatives exist that contain no plastic at all. But they remain niche products, and some materials marketed as “plant-based leather” still use plastic binders or coatings to hold together. Understanding what’s actually in these materials helps you make a more informed choice.
What Most Vegan Leather Is Made Of
The vegan leather market is dominated by two plastics: polyurethane and polyvinyl chloride. PU leather is made by applying a polyurethane coating to a woven or knit fabric base, usually polyester. PVC leather follows the same structure but uses a polyvinyl chloride layer instead. Both are synthetic polymers derived from fossil fuels.
PU is the more common of the two in fashion and accessories because it’s softer, more flexible, and somewhat more breathable than PVC. PVC tends to show up in cheaper goods. It’s stiffer, has a more obviously “plastic” feel, and raises additional health concerns because of the chemicals used to make it flexible.
PVC and Chemical Concerns
PVC on its own is rigid. To turn it into something that mimics leather’s suppleness, manufacturers add chemicals called phthalates as softeners. The most common ones used in PVC products include DEHP, DiNP, and DiDP. These compounds don’t permanently bond to the PVC. They can off-gas into the air over time, especially in warm or humid conditions. Degradation of PVC materials causes emission of various chemicals that can irritate airways and trigger inflammation.
Research published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that occupational asthma cases have been linked to exposure to heated mixtures of PVC and DEHP during artificial leather production. For consumers, the exposure levels from wearing a PVC jacket are far lower than in a factory setting, but the off-gassing is not zero, particularly with new products in enclosed spaces like cars.
PU leather avoids most of these phthalate concerns, though its production process involves chemical solvents that carry their own environmental costs.
How Long Plastic Leather Lasts
One of the practical trade-offs of plastic-based leather is durability. Standard vegan leather typically lasts 2 to 5 years, with some lower-quality versions showing significant cracking and peeling within 1 to 2 years. Even the best PU resins are only expected to hold up for a few years before the surface layer begins to break down.
For comparison, top-grain animal leather typically lasts 10 to 20 years with proper care, and full-grain leather can last 30 years or more. The material itself is structurally sound for up to a century. This difference matters for sustainability calculations: if a plastic leather bag needs replacing three or four times over the same period a single leather bag would last, the total environmental cost shifts considerably.
Microplastic Shedding
Like other synthetic textiles, plastic-based leather sheds tiny plastic fibers during use and washing. Research in Environmental Science and Pollution Research found that all synthetic textiles shed microplastics, with the amount increasing as fabrics experience wear and tear. Abraded or worn fabrics released significantly more fibers than new ones in nearly every material tested.
Vegan leather items like jackets and bags aren’t typically machine-washed the way polyester clothing is, which reduces one major shedding pathway. But surface friction during normal use still releases particles, and the material’s relatively short lifespan means it reaches landfills sooner, where it continues to break down into microplastics over decades. Neither PU nor PVC is biodegradable in any meaningful timeframe.
Plant-Based Alternatives That Are Truly Plastic-Free
Several companies now produce leather alternatives from plants, but the label “plant-based” can be misleading. Many of these materials use a bio-based top layer (from pineapple leaves, cactus, apple waste, or mushroom mycelium) bonded to a polyester backing with polyurethane coatings. The finished product is still partially plastic.
Fully plastic-free options do exist, though they’re rare. Mirum, made by Natural Fiber Welding, is entirely plant-based, using natural tree rubber, rice hulls, cork, and coconut waste. It relies on a patented plant-derived binder instead of any petroleum-based polymer. Brands including Stella McCartney, Camper, and Bellroy have used it in their products. TômTex takes a different approach entirely, using a biopolymer called chitosan derived from shrimp shells and mushroom waste. The raw chitosan is melted into a liquid and poured into molds, producing a material with no plastic component (though it isn’t technically vegan because of the shrimp-shell ingredient).
These two represent the small handful of leather alternatives that can genuinely claim to be plastic-free. If you’re shopping for vegan leather and want to avoid plastic, look beyond the front-of-label marketing. Check whether the product specifies its full material composition, including the backing fabric and any coatings or binders.
How to Tell What You’re Actually Buying
Product labels often obscure what vegan leather is made of. Terms like “vegan leather,” “faux leather,” “leatherette,” and “pleather” all typically refer to PU or PVC. If a care label lists polyurethane or polyvinyl chloride, it’s plastic. If it says “coated fabric” without specifying the coating, it’s almost certainly plastic too.
Products made from newer bio-based materials will usually name them explicitly, because the novelty is a selling point. If a brand uses Mirum, mycelium leather, or cactus-based material, they’ll say so. The absence of that specificity is itself a signal: when vegan leather doesn’t tell you what it’s made of, the answer is most likely polyurethane over polyester. Which is to say, plastic over plastic.