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hello and welcome to Technically Speaking where scientists and engineers come together to chat about a common interest share knowledge and satisfy some curiosity I'm Ellie and today I'm joined by Laura and Antonia to talk about leather made from T-Rex collagen and other alternative forms of leather I brought this to the team because leather and T-Rex is not really something that you expect to see in the same sentence and I was intrigued I was confused Laura were you similarly fascinated by this
topic I was I thought hang on how this has to be something that's done in the lab right They're not just digging T-Rex collagen out of the ground That sounds like craziness And uh yeah it is grown in the lab So this whole biotech thing going on I thought well you've mentioned it so I have to look into it now Yeah you've got no choice once I uh bring up that sort of topic Antonia what about you Once you brought it up again I thought how why what would you use it for And is it
more sustainable if it's lab grown versus the plethora of alternative vegan leather options Yes And boy oh boy do we have a lot to say about this So first off we should explain like Laura said that it is actually grown in a lab and we aren't bringing back T-Rexes to use as uh cows effectively as new form of leather We're not cloning dinosaurs growing them to maturity to then skin and make leather No but golly would that be a Jurassic Park gone wrong So this is actually from a luxury fashion
conglomerate More than one company anyway It's from VML the organoid company and Lab Grown Leather They were also the project that made mammoth meatballs the giant mammoth meatballs So they do have some sort of history of this I don't know bringing back dead things And basically they're trying to create T-Rex leather from fossilized T-Rex collagen I don't think they are though They're using their DNA to then make collagen cuz that's what this company's remitt Yes They seem to have
latched on to the fact that some dinosaur collagen still exists in the world and it's lasted for millions of years Presumably like at least 66 million Yeah So they're engineering cells using synthetic DNA presumably that they've got from fossils etc of T-Rexes And then that is creating some sort of scaffolding And then they're merging other cells onto the scaffolding I mean to be honest it sounds like more trouble than it's worth That was kind of my thought I'm not too sure they are
using a scaffold This is one of the big things about lab grown leather to use a scaffold or not Well even going as far as um medical applications of building skin which is apparently quite tricky Wow Yeah Yeah And I think the article that I had read said they were doing it scaffold-free to let the cells do as they please Is that important I I suppose it might be Yeah Scaffold-free was what I should have said not a scaffolding approach Yeah I have to ask if it doesn't have a scaffolding what do
the cells even look like Because obviously our skin does have collagen and other bits So are they just cells just floating or glued together I don't know I I do not know what this looks like Yeah that's what it sounds like I guess I mean biologically you probably wouldn't have a scaffold Uh this is how I assume how how our bodies work And they just produce cells that then go on to produce stuff like collagen Yeah I guess they created themselves right Like they don't have a scaffold The cells are
just merging however they please into some sort of leatherlike structure Perhaps presumably This is what I wonder Um having not done this in the lab Um you don't just have T-Rex DNA on your shelf just ready to go funnily enough So leather is skin that has been chemically altered right To remove the water and replace that water with like I think some sort of filler in some cases they call it this it's tanned right This chemical treatment like this is traditional like cow leather would be
tanned but they are saying that it's structurally identical I'm not sure how they if it's a T-Rex how would they know it's structurally identical This is what I don't get Collagen to me is just collagen Doesn't matter where it's come from It's exactly the same chemical structure Okay Well then that's the point then isn't it So then the T-Rex collagen is identical to the cow collagen presumably Yes Oh it's just collagen Why you don't Why do you need a T-Rex This reminded me a little bit of
biodiesel You get a different biological source You still get diesel as the actual chemical compound that does the thing Unless it's the other small percentage of other stuff around it that matters Can you tell if you have a piece of finished leather what animal it's come from Presumably you could So it must be some difference But then that's not the collagen making the difference is it It's the DNA of the cells It's like all the hair and the the skin that was there before Yeah I don't know how
much of that is necessarily preserved in the tanning process I didn't it's not something I looked into I just looked in like how do you grow stuff in the lab really Not How do you tan leather Okay So maybe let's dive into that then So we know that this is laboratory grown Whatever it is whatever it comes out as Laura you said you looked into this Is it hard to grow leather in a lab Can you grow leather in a lab So I think what they're doing is growing a skin like
material and then tanning it I found quite a helpful review from someone who I think was doing their PhD at the University of Manchester because it looks very much like their literature review in a thesis that they've published online It's very helpful Very helpful when you're trying to find out about this Exactly The leather doesn't need blood vessels and glands and things in it Just the collagen really Whereas if you wanted to grow skin you need all of those other components as well to
have healthy skin that's going to survive Oh okay That makes sense Yeah So it's easier to grow something that will become leather than it is to regrow skin in the lab I also because they're not they're not growing T-Rex skin for a living T-Rex are they They're just making skin to do whatever to make leather So then it's like a lot easier if you take out the fact that it doesn't ever have to live in inverted commas Exactly So I presume what they're doing is they've got some synthetic T-Rex DNA
They're using that to produce some cells and then they're encouraging those cells to produce collagen Okay there are different types of collagen in your skin It's worth noting So the stuff on the top includes some type three collagen which is a little bit finer than type one collagen but the type one stuff which is the main thing in your skin gives it its strength whereas the type three gives it its suppleness So depending on which part of the skin you're taking your leather from affects
the grade of the leather effectively So I assume they're considering that when they're growing their collagen to have both types I'm sure if people were really into their luxury handbags or leather items they would probably know a bit more about these things like top grain or goats or sheep skin leather and all the difference between them but I don't I I know roughly some things are softer than others Yes I did do a little bit of research into what we can make leather out of and it's pretty much
anything that's got skin is the long and short of it It could be all sorts but we will come back to that to dive in in a bit because I'm still intrigued by this lab grown leather situation Is anyone else doing this Presumably not T-Rexes but just like as a vegan alternative or as a you know alternative to like cows Yeah Well apparently the forerunner for doing the lab grown stuff is by a company called Modern Meadows And I read somewhere they're using yeast cells Then
I also read something about using cow cells as well So I'm not entirely sure what they're using but they're using some cells to produce some collagen and then putting some more cells on top and getting them to grow collagen Then stacking this sort of 15 layers deep but it's still only like.1 of a mil thick or thin if you like Wow So it's it's not the same as real skin So it's not as thick or as durable as real leather What are they using it for Are they making
like yeast handbags or are they making Yeah from what I've read nothing's really in production yet because it just doesn't have the same quality Some places are sort of sending them out as sort of example bits of leather that you can't do anything with And it sounds like it's more expensive as well because I guess the lab process is so intensive It takes about 6 weeks This seems like again more trouble than it's worth Like we've got a lot of cows Well surely let's just stick
to what we've got Yeah And if it's 0.1 mm before tanning does it lose some of that thickness That's so thin during processing And so it'd be Oh I can't even picture like it could it be used instead for like skin grafts or like a medical application if it's that thin I don't know if he'd use the T-Rex or the the yeast cells but I presume that's what some medical research is looking into This apparently is also quite niche I just thought this was a big thing because everyone has
skin but apparently not a lot of people need skin grafts in the Western world so it's not that well researched I recently did an article this is a slight nonsequator about 3D printed skin for burn victims and they put the cells of the person that has been burned into the machine and then it like robotically prints skin Wo which is very cool Sounds very niche Yeah Does it print fully formed skin or does it then need to grow its own skin a bit more I think there's like there's still like a healing
process involved but it was for um people that were burn victims So it was to heal not the burn but the skin graft site in like a more speedy what you call it hygienic way to like reduce risk of infection because then it was their cells that were like helping to repair where they' taken the skin from It was really interesting Yeah And I did read that growing of skin or something that will become leather could be made better by including a scaffold But the challenge there is it needs to be
permeable enough for nutrients and oxygen to pass through it so your cells can grow and produce the collagen And the scaffold would be something like if you've ever had surgery like a dissolvable stitches that they put in Oh I see what you mean Yeah I think it's made from something like polyactic acids and once it's done its job it just disappears breaks off into Yeah I mean that is quite I can see where they're coming from of that to have something to grow on seems like a good idea but again
I guess if you've got to get rid of it to make it pure skin or you know I mean I don't know if the stuff that's.1 mil thick could then be bonded to something which would be bonded leather which wouldn't be very high quality but you could attach it to like a fabric backing and if that was using some biodegradable glue and woven cotton that might be stronger one way of doing it but then it seems to sort of defeat the purpose Yeah it's not really leather in that point is
it And not to get too off topic but I have I'm still finding questions question marks over how biodegradable PLA is as a plastic Oh okay I I don't know if people are getting confused with the description of industrially compostable or industrially biodegradable but if people are using it in dressings and it disappears into the person totally gets broken down then that sounds biodegradable to me Yeah I guess it depends on the environment it's in right And it was I think it just
became more hydrated and bonds gradually break over time I might be totally misremembering that polyactic acid is used as dissolvable stitches though Okay So maybe it's a different compound altogether potentially There are many I think this is interesting because you mentioned that it's more expensive potentially to get this yeast leather But how does it compare to like waste or chemicals or water or like in terms of sustainability Is it better because it's I guess it's much smaller scale Yeah I
wonder about this What I was reading said that it in theory it should be You don't have to do any pre-tanning which is where you scrape off the bits of skin that you don't want drain all the blood out of it shave off the hair whatever you're going to do Uh exfoliate it to remove the dead layer of epithelial cells Oh my god a lot of processes Yeah So fewer processes therefore less waste seems to be the idea but they're not actually in full production mode yet It's just doing something in a lab in
doing stuff in a lab is often quite wasteful because you're doing a very small scale Yeah Antonia how does this compare to something like vegan leather or like true plant-based leather because that exists doesn't it Yeah And there are a lot of companies most notably luxury fashion companies that are using it So I don't think it's super affordable and widespread Well depends actually because there is so many different types of vegan or plant-based leather To start off with there's some
things rebranding as vegan leather And I'm not sure it really fits the definition of vegan because they use fossil fuels to make it So polyurethane and polyvinyl chloride or vinyl are being used as branded vegan leather because it's not using animal products but it's using ancient animal products How far back are you going to classify something as an animal recently deceased or at least a long time ago like the dinosaur Yeah exactly But if we look at the plant-based ones if you think of
some sort of biological agricultural waste people have tried to make leather out of it I mean that's a good thing I guess if it's waste energy Yeah that sounds worthy It sounds good on the surface Uh-oh But like Laura and you were talking about having scaffolding or structure some of them aren't just pure leather they have some sort of backing on it and sometimes they use nonbiodegradable materials to back it which makes the whole product nonbiodegradable Yeah Then you just got
a composite that's really difficult to dispose of cuz it's at least two different things Yeah And then some of them are really well bonded together It's like the Oh I've forgotten which one now Oh that's it Cactus So they've got cactus plants particularly the prickly pear variety And when the tree is matured you can peel off the old leaves mush them up and then magically make a resin And my question is is all of the product that you needed to make the resin naturally in the cactus or did
they add other stuff to But because it's a commercial process they're not really sharing all the finer detail They just say "Make resin magically form it and
you get leather." This is what frustrates me a little bit with companies doing research like that As an academic you're told to publish share your work with everyone else Industry is not the same Yeah They'll they're beyond research because they've made it into a commercial product and people make products out of it now Is there not some sort of standard of like product You know if you're making a handbag out of cactus leather there's got to be some sort of quality control from an
organization that's not your cactus leather handbag company Well that's it Yeah they did get someone else to verify that it's biiobased material and I think the highest rating they got on one of their fabrics was 65% biiobased Okay Do we know how that compares to like normal leather Cuz presumably that's higher That's a good point actually Yeah And one of the big sort of marketing points that they make out of the vegan leather market is there's a lot less steps that
actually making leather from cattle uses many many production steps many chemicals and some of them are harmful chemicals for the workers involved Whereas they're saying a lot of the um other stuff you can dry the material in the sun and then you boil it I don't know if that's to make it soften and then somehow treat it and shape it if you want the the sort of different patterns like snake skin style or the traditional castle grain It does crack me up that someone would go to the
trouble of creating cactus leather and doing all of that process and then be like "We should put snake skin on this."
Yeah let's make it look like an animal Make it look like something new and interesting not the same old stuff make it obvious that it's a new thing and make it more desirable therefore Yeah Yeah People don't want a new thing They want the old thing without the guilt Yeah Without the guilt Maybe I don't know I feel like if I were wearing something ethical I'd want it to be obvious that it was different to normal leather Yeah It's interesting isn't it Are you trying to blend in but feel good
about yourself Are you trying to show off that your thing is you know ethical and sustainable and hasn't involved killing an animal or even just I'm not a person that tends to show off but you know setting an example and saying "I do
this You can do it too." Yeah I suppose cork doesn't really hide that it is cork It's very much got that cork pattern to it I've seen that like that was uh at the Manchester Makers Market there was a cork stand with like bags and belts and all bits and pieces which I thought was cool But then I wouldn't say that that was an alternative to leather That's just a cork bag Yeah I'd wonder how long that lasts as well Is it hardwearing and therefore do you go through more cork
bags which means more harvesting Is that less sustainable Well interestingly I did find a research article that actually compared different properties of the materials test it against actual leather So some of the tests they had were flexibility tensile strength water permeability cuz yeah leather is also actually a waterproof material in some cases Yeah the conclusion wasn't brilliant It wasn't a great news story for the plant-based um alternatives I mean there is a reason that we've been
using leather for however many hundreds of years right like traditional cow leather and many many other types of leather So I was looking into this but it turns out people aren't raising cows for leather specifically Ah so this is usually what they're calling either a byproduct or a co-roduct of the meat industry So especially for things like cows pigs and goats the animal will be slaughtered usually for meat And the hide I looked at a few different ones but they said the hide is usually only 2
to 5% of a cow's value So if you're raising cows that's obviously costing you a lot of land and water and feed So the money that you're making from beef let's say is way way higher than the money that you're making from the leather But if you're slaughtering the cow anyway you might as well make that extra cash And then presumably the leather producers get a hold of it and then put this really high markup on for having processed it and sell it for a lot of money Yeah I guess whoever's
doing the turning of the hide into leather into selling it to Hermes is uh I don't know raking it in However if you're going to go exotic then the complete opposite is true So it's not a byproduct at all And if you're making crocodile then entire most of the value of the crocodile is in the hide which is absolutely unbelievable And I can't believe it's still a thing Don't you think this is like you know how people wearing fur on the runway was like such a taboo thing Yeah Hunting something
just for its skin doesn't seem right Yeah Crocodile leather's got to go the same way Well if you've gone to all that effort of catching what is allegedly quite a dangerous animal wouldn't you then make full use of it Yeah surely He must be able to eat crocodile meat Oh god probably I do think they're not eating anything weird are they Just largely eating fish and small mammals You would think so Yeah However and this is where it gets even more interesting You can basically make leather out of
anything with a skin including some weird ones Uh so I did a little bit of digging and I found that people are making leather out of lion fish which if you've not seen them are like quite spiky looking brown and white stripey big fish that are extremely invasive and damaging to coral reefs And they're getting um indigenous communities to go out onto these reefs and kill the lion fish and collect them And then they sell the lion fish hides skin bodies to a company And then the money that they
make from selling the lion fish goes back into conservation I mean that is incredible because yeah you've made something that was a problem into something that can help solve the problem Yeah So I should proudly wear my lionfish leather in that case Yeah I think you can I think you can proudly wear your lionfish leather Yeah Tell everyone I'm being really ethical and here's why On the flip side I have also got an example of people using mushrooms to make leather Oh I came across them
when I was looking at the lab grown and stuff I didn't look at the detail but it's basically producing what Myelium fibers and then treating that Yeah And it it's almost like the opposite of it being a waste product You're making the mushrooms solely for the purpose of trying to make leather but you make mushrooms by giving them loads of moisture and then you're drying them to get rid of all the moisture It seems like a waste of water Yeah It's like going back to square one where we were
with the T-Rex of like why bother Why bother Yeah At least the lion fish make sense because they're ruining the coral reef for all the other fish So like let's kill them and make something out of it That makes sense I guess if I'm being cynical it's about how you market it like the T-Rex I It's just cuz it sounds cool right You're not going to be rocking up to the next podcast meeting in a T-Rex leather jacket T-Rex boots No But how would you show that it's T-Rex as well Maybe it's
not for you know I was going to say people like us you know the high fashion people would know that it was T-Rex or kangaroo or walrus leather Apparently very good for making boats Uh is something that I found Is that still made or was that back in the day That was back in whatever era it was that people were you know indigenous communities were making their own boats because you can imagine walruses quite tough skin naturally waterproof longlasting also massive So you're
getting a lot of skin for your effort in killing a walrus I feel like you're just kind of this sounds really macab but just hollowing out a walrus and floating around in it I totally pictured that too I thought that too That must be how they get the cuz then you've eaten the warus as well And then you just got to move the bones which could actually be you know you could use like the bones for like scaffolding Yes House scaffolding Oh my god Yeah there's a lot I When I said anything with a skin
can be leather or at least someone has attempted it I wasn't kidding Apparently the strongest leather in the natural world is kangaroo Uh most expensive is crocodile or alligator And if you want to get really fancy instead of T-Rex you can go iguana or stingray which I mean please don't No I like those animals At least kangaroos are seen as a pest in Australia aren't they So although they make seem really cute to non-natives they're actually annoying and quite
everywhere Yeah you can do with fewer kangaroos And yeah it's not just skin You can make it out of anything with a fiber but then you have to apply some sort of resin something to bond it all together which is questionable about its origins I think there's quite a lot of questionable things about this whole process Do we even want these things in our lives Is anyone joining the wait list for a T-Rex leather handbag T-Rex leather boots anyone Not for T-Rexes Did
you know that's also not the oldest surviving collagen that's been found I did say it just sounds cool If the T-Rex is 65 million years the Lufangosaurus I'm probably pronouncing that wrong um is 195 million years old And they found some Lefangosaurus collagen in fossils as well Wow But no one's going to say I've got Lefangosaurus shoes are they Bye-bye That's That's really amazing I mean if you made a fashion house Yeah that could be an excellent name for a fashion house I mean I can't feel bad
about wearing T-Rex leather boot unless there's some like hidden chemical that's like causing a lot of environmental problems in the making process because they're all extinct They've all been extinct for at least 66 million years So it's not like I'm killing crocodiles or kangaroos or adorable iguanas to make leather Feel like it's probably not it's like one step removed from just digging up some oil and turning that into a fake leather though It's still dinosaurs To
me it's not it's the entire energy use to to make it that is like there's there's plenty of other things we could do that are a little bit easier that lend itself to being made into leather Is any leather better than getting a bag off Primark you know,£10 handbag from Primark that could be made of anything It could have be like a cotton thing that someone in a sweat shops produced Yeah versus some leather that came from the US from a cow that was probably treated quite well I don't know I
suppose it depends how morally opposed you are to killing animals and shipping that skin across the world Yeah because there is a lot of unethical practices in fashion So yeah would you weigh up the welfare of the animals the welfare of the workers the supply chain the cost of shipping fibers across the world to be treated and dyed and sewed up and then shipped back to participate in the Primark sale Yeah Sustainability is such a difficult topic to get your head
around cuz there are so many components So many I mean what I like about the leather is like most of our shoes used to be made with leather soles right But now they're made from synthetics and they wear down over time So you're just leaking microplastics into the environment Unless it's natural rubber It seems unlikely though doesn't it How would you know How would you know Yeah But if you could market them is it doesn't have to be T-Rex leather but as leather sold shoes that are perfectly
natural and it's fine that they're going to wear down and you can replace them or compost them at the end I think I'd go for that I think I prefer it I do a lot of walking I could be into a compostable shoe because also if your shoes break if they can't be like remade or repaired by a cobbler they're going to landfill aren't they So if it's a compostable shoe then I'm into it Well that's it I have a small stockpile of shoes that I no longer wear but I don't want to throw
away cuz I'd rather them be used But then apparently all my waste is used in some way Nothing really goes to landfill near me anymore A lot of it is burned for energy Oh wow But in the waste reuse hierarchy incineration is only one step above landfill Ah good point So if I can stick it on my compost and grow some tomatoes out with my T-Rex leather shoes Very expensive compost Very expensive compost I I keep going back to the mushroom because it perplexes me that it
was $500 US per square meter Like fabric you know say cotton fabric you could get that for 10 to 20 per meter and the width is usually over a meter That is more than a square meter for a 50th of the price Yeah but what about the you know what about the implications How much are you going to pay to assage your guilt about sustainability How much is it really worth Like is it even better in the p first place Is it worth paying We don't know It's too big a topic We
can't possibly comprehend it all in one podcast episode And we have comprehended a lot so far So if we start at the beginning we started with the T-Rex I don't think we ever really left the T-Rex behind But they are making a leather-like substance a skin a collagen fiber But fortunately we probably are still a way off from uh T-Rex leather handbags and jackets We then looked at how you could grow skin and leather in a lab which though possible is perhaps not the easiest thing to do and is pretty
time consuming There are a lot of vegan/plant-based alternatives to leather from mushrooms to cork to cactuses and I feel like maybe sticking with cows is the best option for the time being as at least it is a byproduct of the meat industry and I couldn't bear to skin anything remotely close to an iguana or a kangaroo However I'm excited by the research though not for the T-Rex stuff but for actually growing skin that is useful for people for wound healing Yeah And then for more sustainable
leather generally I think that's a good thing Yes I think it's good that we've got all these alternatives Maybe leather in general will go the way of fur or try and go the way of fur and uh we'll stop raising animals purely for their skin in the future Thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next episode of Technically Speaking The views expressed in this podcast belong entirely to the person that said them They do not represent any industry or organization
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