Tag Archives: plant-based

Native Union’s Sleek (Re)Classic Apple Watch Bands Are Made of Plant-Based Leather

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If you’re an iPhone user with a taste for leather cases, you might already know all about Native Union’s knack for designing high-quality accessories, like their leather MagSafe iPhone 14 case, made in collaboration with Maison Kitsuné. Now there’s a similar cruelty-free Italian leather-inspired band for your Apple Watch. It’s made of Yatay, a leather-like compound that makes up the construction of Native Union’s gorgeous (Re)Classic Apple Watch Band design, and you can get your own for $59.99.

Designer: Native Union

Buy it now on Amazon

If you told me the (Re)Classic Band for Apple Watch in its light brown Kraft colorway was made of repurposed mycelium — fungal threads spanning long distances underground, which mushrooms blossom out of — I absolutely would not believe you. And yet, that’s one of the many all-natural resources used in the synthesis of Yatay by Coronet.

It sounds like everything from Native Union’s stainless steel clasp to its comfortable, soft-lined backing is made of recycled materials. (Re)Classic style is finely textured, giving it a sophisticated look that does quite a bit to distract from the fact it… isn’t made of genuine leather. Still, the high level of craftsmanship lent to these intricately-designed plant-based leather wristbands is difficult to deny.

All of Native Union’s straps come with integrated lugs, which connect directly to the Apple Watch — specifically, the little cutouts on the top and bottom of the Apple Watch where a wristband is locked in place. That means they blend naturally with any color configuration, and Native Union really wants to emphasize how important that is, citing the integrated lugs as a central focal point of (Re)Classic design ethos on its official product page:

“We designed (Re)Classic Band to match the textured elegance of (Re)Classic Case for iPhone and AirPods, now for your Apple Watch. Made to be a refined complement to your digital timepiece, we went one step further with fully wrapped integrated lugs so that the straps becomes a seamless extension of your Apple Watch without any visible hardware. A leather-like strap with wrapped lugs is something we’ve been searching for for a while now, so we made it ourselves.”

If you own one of the older Apple Watch Series, don’t worry: these bands come in two sizes that are compatible with every main-line Apple Watch model, depending on the size you wear. Though, you’ll want to specifically order the 38/40/41mm configuration if you’re rocking an Apple Watch SE or SE 2. And likewise, you’ll want to go for the 42/44/45mm measurement if you’re planning to attach one of these fine wristbands to an Apple Watch Ultra or Ultra 4.

The post Native Union’s Sleek (Re)Classic Apple Watch Bands Are Made of Plant-Based Leather first appeared on Yanko Design.

Pineapple leaves become a convincing leather alternative using a sustainable process

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We often take textiles for granted because they seem to be less harmful to the environment compared to plastics, but even that industry has some dark secrets. Chemicals used to create dyes that give life to clothes are harmful both to the planet as well as to the humans who handle them. Leather is a favorite among designers but is even more controversial because of its sources and the processes involved in tanning the material. There have been numerous attempts to create leather alternatives, some of them involving problematic components and resources as well. One new option, however, tries to use leaves that would have been thrown away or, worse, burned anyway and turns them into a leather-like textile that you would easily mistake for the real thing.

Designer: Carmen Hijosa (Ananas Anam)

Common synthetic leather alternatives don’t really solve the overall problem with leather. While they do mean that fewer animals are killed in the process, the chemicals and processes involved in making them are just as harmful to the planet as traditional leather tanning. That is why many designers and some companies have turned their eyes toward Nature’s natural fibers for inspiration, but using plant-based materials isn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s what makes Piñatex quite the innovation, providing a leather alternative that’s close to the original in quality while also supporting a truly circular economy.

Pineapple leaves are the natural byproducts of harvesting these tropical fruits, but there is very little use for them. This waste is simply gathered and left to decompose, though most farms actually just burn them. Unsurprisingly, that action results in the release of large volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, worsening the greenhouse effect on the planet. Piñatex uses the ignored potential of pineapple leaves to produce something that you probably would have never thought came from discarded leaves.

Piñatex pretty much serves the same purpose as conventional leather but can even be more versatile than the original. It’s easier to produce more colors, for one, using GOTS-certified pigments. A water-based PU resin coating is applied on top to add durability and water resistance, making it a good fit for almost anything that would normally use leather. And unlike most plant-based textiles, Piñatex is non-woven in order to provide that same texture as leather.

What makes the material even better is how it pushes for a “cradle to cradle” ecosystem, where the materials are not only biodegradable but also helps pineapple farmer tap an additional source of income. The process of turning pineapple leaves into leather-like textiles also uses fewer natural resources and no chemicals. And whatever is left of the leaves can be used as fertilizer for the next generation of pineapples or biofuel for the machines that harvest them or make Piñatex.

It is definitely encouraging to see more sustainable alternatives growing in the textile and fashion industry, considering how clothes and accessories are mass-produced by the millions. Plastics may be the biggest problem the planet faces today, but almost every facet of our modern life deserves re-examination and redesign. And organic or plant-based alternatives don’t have to mean lower quality materials, as the list of heavyweight Piñatex customers can testify.

The post Pineapple leaves become a convincing leather alternative using a sustainable process first appeared on Yanko Design.

This wonder box lets you easily grow nature’s miracle food right inside your home

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Building your diet and your life around plant-forward meals isn’t exactly easy, especially when you take special care in selecting where the ingredients come from or how they’re harvested. In an ideal world, we’d all grow our own organic food in our pesticide-free yards, but few actually have the luxury of free space in the first place. Growing vegetables and herbs indoors is actually gaining momentum these days, but those aren’t the only things you can cultivate inside your house. Mushrooms are relatively easier to grow, especially indoors, but getting the conditions right isn’t that straightforward and painless as well. Fortunately, Shrooly has your back and makes growing mushrooms not only dead simple but also interesting and attractive as well.

Designer: Shrooly

Click Here to Buy Now: $293 $438 (33% off). YD readers get free growing pods worth $50. Hurry, only 5 left!

Although some people might balk after learning about its classification (spoiler alert: it’s a fungus), mushrooms are one of nature’s mysteries and wonders. They can pop up almost anywhere, especially in dark environments, which has become the origin of some idiomatic expressions. Not only are the edible variants great sources of nutrition and flavor, they can also have therapeutic or even medicinal benefits if you know how to grow and use them. Despite their ubiquity, getting your hands on quality mushrooms is ironically difficult unless you grow them, and this unassuming minimalist appliance makes that happen almost instantly.

Shrooly makes growing mushrooms as easy as putting a prepared pod inside the box and turning it on. While many indoor farms take weeks to harvest your produce, Shrooly can grow mushrooms in days. The humble appliance takes all of the guesswork and monitoring out of the equation so that you can just watch your mushrooms grow day by day. And when you yourself have grown into some sort of a mushroom expert, you can easily take control of the whole process as well through Shrooly’s mobile app. Whether you want more humidity or more light, the settings are just a few flicks and taps away.

For Complete Beginners – It is a smart device that allows you to enjoy every aspect of the mushroom-growing process with little to no effort.

Grow Your Own Superfood at Home – Shiitake, Reishi, Lion’s mane, or Enoki, are just some of the numerous mushroom varieties you can easily grow at home.

Part of Shrooly’s magic is the ready-to-grow pods available for purchase. A single block can grow two harvests of mushrooms, which are often three times more than what would have been able to buy from the market. Presuming, of course, you can even buy the mushrooms you want from the market, which often isn’t the case. In contrast, Shrooly pods offer a wide variety of edible mushrooms, including pink oyster and shitake, as well as medicinal breeds like Reishi, Turkey Tail, and Lion’s Mane. The latter group is definitely not something you’ll be able to pick from a supermarket shelf. And going with the sustainability theme, the pod blocks are fully organic, pesticide-free, and made from 100% recycled materials.

Shrooly also has one other special trait that isn’t directly related to the use of mushrooms. The box itself is beautiful, with a minimalist design that will fit anywhere at home, even in the middle of your living room. Its large window is made to showcase the mushroom that grows bigger each day that passes, sparking interest and anticipation. It will definitely be a conversation starter that could tide your family and friends over to a healthier diet.

Convincing people to try more plant-forward diets requires giving them scents and flavors they never knew they wanted and making it easier to acquire these sources as well. Why should you settle for frozen mushrooms which came from who knows where and were grown with questionable methods when you can grow your own batch in seven days and have more than twice the amount? With Shrooly, you can get all the mushrooms you need when you need them, even the ones you can’t even buy in groceries, and all for a $299 starting price that quickly pays for itself in savings.

Click Here to Buy Now: $293 $438 (33% off). YD readers get free growing pods worth $50. Hurry, only 5 left!

The post This wonder box lets you easily grow nature’s miracle food right inside your home first appeared on Yanko Design.

Electrolux GRO kitchen concept offers a fresh take on sustainable eating

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It’s no longer enough to just eat healthy. One also needs to make sure our healthy eating is also healthy for the planet.

There has been a great deal of interest and attention given to diets in the past years, especially as people were forced to fend for themselves at home. Diet fads come and go, but the ingredients we use have mostly remained the same, and the demand for meat-based products has only gone higher, not lower. Our food system isn’t just broken, but so is our mindset and expectations of an unlimited supply of materials to feed the planet at the expense of the planet itself. That definitely has to change, and a holistic kitchen system imagines how tomorrow’s diets won’t only be plant-forward but also planet-friendly.

Designer: Electrolux

Eating healthier has almost become an obsession of many people these days, evidenced by the number of new diet styles and trends that pop up every year. But while people have become generally conscious of the food they eat, they often turn a blind eye to the long-term effects of our food supply systems on the Earth’s ecosystem. Feeding the planet doesn’t have to come at the expense of the planet itself, nor do plant-forward diets have to be the same old stuff you see on the Internet and YouTube.

GRO, from the Swedish word for “to sprout,” reimagines and reinvents a kitchen designed for sustainable eating. While that largely revolves around transitioning to a more plant-forward diet, it also acknowledges the fact that meat will still be a part of people’s lives. Instead, GRO provides solutions to nudge people to become smarter about their food choices, like a “jewelry box” storage that encourages eating less but better quality meat.

GRO includes a modular compartment system that you can combine like LEGO bricks, depending on your dietary needs and kitchen space. Each compartment is designed not only to preserve ingredients but also to showcase their diversity and beauty. A Plant Gallery, for example, provides optimal conditions for storing fruits and vegetables while also letting you enjoy their fresh appearance behind textured glass.

The system also defies stereotypes of plant-forward diets as bland or unexciting, especially to taste buds. In fact, GRO encourages exploration and experimentation, like the Grain and Pulse Library, which lets you try out alternative sources of protein from grains and pulses. Included in the collection is the Nordic Smoker, which lets homeowners smoke their food indoors and infuse new flavors into their recipes. And if all those starts to sound a bit overwhelming, the GRO Coach digital food companion will help you make the right sustainable choices based on your habits and needs.

GRO is part of Electrolux’s Better Living Initiative to promote better eating and better living inside more sustainable homes. The company sent out a survey last year aimed at young people between 15 and 20 to share their thoughts on the future of sustainable living. They are, after all, the biggest stakeholders in the planet’s future, and Electrolux’s kitchen concept wants to make sure that there will still be such a future that will be able to sustain life on the planet for generations to come.

The post Electrolux GRO kitchen concept offers a fresh take on sustainable eating first appeared on Yanko Design.

Bellroy Slim Sleeve wallet embraces a new kind of plant-based leather

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Designers of all kinds just love leather, whether in theory or in practice. Genuine leather is naturally warm and soft to the touch, generating pleasant sensations on our skins and in our brains. It also ages gracefully, developing scuffs and patina that are unique to each product and largely depend on how it has been used. For all these desirable traits, leather is still controversial because of its source, and current alternatives aren’t completely free from sin either. That’s where Bellroy’s latest eco-friendly wallet comes in, making a rather bold statement that tries to push plant-based leather into a completely sustainable and circular future.

Designer: Bellroy

Simply looking at the new Bellroy Slim Sleeve “MIRUM Edition” wouldn’t clue you in that it isn’t using genuine leather. It looks and presumably feels like the real thing, especially considering the brand has built its name and its business around high-quality leather. To deviate from this path is almost heresy for Bellroy, but it admits that it also has a bigger responsibility to ensure the longevity of the planet while not compromising the quality of its products.

The problem is that the current stock of “vegan leather” carries an almost deceptive image. While it is true that it doesn’t source the material from animal skin, it actually also does damage to the environment in the long run. Most of these “pleather” materials do use some amount of plant materials, but they’re always mixed with plastics, often polyurethane (PU) or polyvinyl chloride (vinyl or PVC), which are derived from petroleum. Even the very processes used to manufacture these leather alternatives can cause harm to the environment.

It’s because of this that Bellroy partnered with Natural Fiber Welding to utilize its new MIRUM material, which is 100% made from natural inputs, with no plastics or toxic chemicals involved. It utilizes the natural chemistry of these natural substances to create a material that is a dead knocker for genuine leather. Even better, the material doesn’t become plastic pollution and can be recycled or decomposed into something that will feed the plants that, in turn, will become future MIRUM leather.

The problem with many alternative leathers, including those vegan leathers, is that they are unable to faithfully recreate the look, feel, and unique traits of genuine leather. Bellroy’s use of MIRUM is pretty much a big stamp of approval for the material as enough to pass up as the real deal. The accessory brand is so confident in it that it is even offering its typical three-year warranty for a plant-based leather that might still sound experimental for many designers.

As for the wallet itself, the Bellroy Slim Sleeve MIRUM Edition includes cotton lining to protect cards and is stitched with cotton threads. There’s room for easy access to two cards, but there’s also a pull tab that reveals infrequently used plastics. The slim and small profile makes it convenient to quickly slip in and out of pockets, which you might find yourself often doing just to enjoy the feel of this guilt-free material.

The post Bellroy Slim Sleeve wallet embraces a new kind of plant-based leather first appeared on Yanko Design.

This sustainable lamp is designed using discarded banana fibers!

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I will never stop being amazed by how designers are pushing the boundaries by creating sustainable products. Nuclée is a lamp created from discarded banana flesh and it is….truly bananas! The French designer duo came up with the concept and produced it during a six-month residency at the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute (N.T.C.R.I.) in Taiwan.

The minimal lamp puts the sustainable material front and center with a bamboo circle around it to highlight it. Banana fibers from the plantations are usually considered as waste after the traditional extraction process and cast aside. However, the designers were intrigued by this. material and found it fascinating when working with a lighting design concept. After empirical research, they succeeded in stabilizing the plant tissue using a particular refining technique and after applying different pressure as well as heat parameters. This new material is highlighted by shapes of bent bamboo, inspired by the internal structure of the banana tree stem and that is how the form of Nuclée mood lights came to be.

“Settled near Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan, the Kavalan aboriginal tribe is expert in the use of banana fiber: they make it their traditional clothing. I had the chance to meet them, to share their way of life, and to learn from their elders the ancestral techniques to use this plant. This new material is sublimated here in curved bamboo shapes, inspired by the banana tree structure,” said Dorian as he elaborated on the inception of his idea. The stabilizing process also gives it a color range from white to dark brown while enhancing the natural texture of the banana flesh.

After learning about these ingenious age-old methods of working with this plant, the designers used the process of extraction using only the outer part of the stem and other techniques to develop this modern sustainable lamp. Their experiments had them checking the material’s reaction to heat, cold, humidity, pressure, combination with other materials, and more to make sure it was actually usable in a wide variety of conditions. This also helps to break the notion that sustainable designs aren’t strong or long-lasting. Nuclée is also a project winner of the “Best of Year” Grand Prize (New York, 2020) and of the Green Product Award (Berlin, 2021).

Designers: Cordélia Faure & Dorian Etienne of ENSCI Les Ateliers

Beyond Meat says its new plant-based burgers are juicier and healthier

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Beyond Meat isn’t letting McDonalds’ plant-based burger go unanswered. The meat alternative maker has unveiled two new versions of the Beyond Burger that address complaints from those who still prefer beef. The lead burger is reportedly the company’s...

These modern sneakers are made from 98% plant-based materials

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Corn, rubber, eucalyptus, and cork. These are the unlikely materials that come together to make the Kengos Lace-Up – a chic, clean, modern-looking sneaker that’s designed to safely biodegrade after you’re done with it.

The Lace-Up makes a very ambitious claim of being 98% natural and plant-based, making it environment-friendly and vegan-friendly too. Its aesthetic is guided by the materials used in it, resulting in a sneaker that looks distinctly unique. On top, you’ve got an upper made from Amaize, a corn-based fabric that’s hardy-yet-breathable. The upper body is lined on the inside with eucalyptus fabric, allowing the sneakers to regulate temperature, absorb sweat, and cool you down in the heat. The Lace-Up’s midsole comes made out of cork, which molds to the shape of one’s foot almost like a foam insert… and the outsole comes crafted from Kengos’ patent-pending Pure-Flex rubber, which is durable as a work-boot, but biodegrades nearly 35-times as fast.

Kengos is currently beta-testing their shoes, allowing a small group of people to purchase them and wear them for a period of 30 days. After a month, Kengos takes your feedback using a questionnaire and a small interview with its founders, and sends you a second pair of shoes for free when the Lace-Up line officially launches in November. When you buy a pair of shoes, not only do you become a part of Kengos’ effort to truly build something driven by real customer feedback, you also support a company with a goal of making products that are sustainable, environmentally friendly, and least impact the earth.

Designer: Dave Costello (Kengos)

Starbucks is selling an Impossible sausage breakfast sandwich in the US

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As of today, you can buy a plant-based breakfast sandwich made with Impossible Foods’ imitation sausage at most Starbucks locations in the US. Given that Starbucks has more than 15,000 US locations and that Impossible Foods also signed a deal with Bu...