This Video Of Dutch Designers Making Leather Out Of Mango Skin Has 7 Million Views

The key to designing sustainable products out of regular food scraps or leftover food peels is to be creative and waste less. Moreover, the possibilities are endless when it comes to repurposing kitchen scraps, making natural cleaners from leftover citrus, or turning fruit and vegetable peels into compost for your garden.

Adopting a sustainable mindset offers endless do-it-yourself (DIY) projects that can be completed in your kitchen, in addition to being good for the environment. Now, two designers from the Netherlands have revolutionised sustainability by using mango peels, which are normally thrown away as waste, to create leather.

Two Dutch designers demonstrated a creative method for making leather from mango skins in a widely shared video. Mangoes, which are usually thrown in the trash, are saved from going to waste by gathering the seeds and pureeing the fruit instead of throwing it away.

The video was shared by a user named – sambentley. He captioned his post saying – “This leather isn’t made from cows! Could you tell the difference?” He went on to explain his post by saying that it was made by two Dutch designers named Koen Meerkerk and Hugo de Boon, who founded Fruitleather Rotterdam in an effort to combat food waste and the environmentally harmful leather tanning business!

Watch the video here:

A post shared by Sam | Sustainable Living (@sambentley)

To strengthen and improve the material’s protective properties, natural additives are added. After that, the puree is evenly spread, dried into sheets, covered in a glaze for protection, and embossed to resemble real leather. This fruit leather, which is made entirely of natural materials and is used to make watch straps, purses, and shoes, also has features like total waterproofing.

Conventional leather production, on the other hand, releases dangerous chemicals into the environment, contaminating water sources and putting the health of residents and labourers at serious risk. Substitutes like fruit leather made from mangos fight food waste while also making the environment safer. This novel method lessens the environmental impact of conventional leather manufacturing, promising a more secure and sustainable future.

The video was shared on December 12 last year and it has garnered an impressive 7.7 million views so far. It has also collected more than 3,10,000 lakh likes and the numbers are increasing.

“I’ll take this any day over “vegan leather” which is just plastic. This is so much better!!!,” a user commented while another wrote, “I’ll 100 per cent wear fruit leather.”

“Yesss, different fruit leather is amazing as well as cactus and mushroom leathers! You can literally grow leather! You do not need to kill unnecessarily,” a social media junkie mentioned. “And not harming animals in the process. Perfect,” echoed a fourth user. Meanwhile, a user jokingly commented, “But can you eat it when you’re done wearing it?”