[antisthenes]

Frankly, I'm not sure we should completely abandon leather.

Large mammals die all the time, and it would be more wasteful to just burn the leather, rather than use it as a durable material.

Besides, how much livestock is grown and slaughtered specifically for leather? A minute amount, presumably, but I'm willing to be proven wrong in anyone has the data.

[dTal]

The kinds of people who would go out of their way to buy plant-based substitute leather products presumably are also not on board with the mass slaughter of livestock for any purpose. Even if they were dying "anyway", to purchase any byproducts is to partially fund the operation and improve the economics of an industry they consider unethical.

[starttoaster]

Surely those people are also choosing not to have children, since the human population growth of this planet is what spurred the less ethical farms to exist as more economical, space-efficient ways to farm the fauna people had been farming for centuries? I also don't find the farms entirely ethical, based on the exposé media I'd seen of them. I just don't know what the alternative is, other than have products made partially with fossil fuels that break more frequently.

[neuralRiot]

> as more economical, space-efficient ways to farm the fauna people had been farming for centuries? I also don't find the farms entirely ethical, based on the exposé media I'd seen of them.

I’ve been vegan for more than 15 years, i have no children but that’s an entirely separate debate, forecasts all around the world indicate a slowdown in global birthrates this might seem good at first but is not so much, it means an increase in average age of population which means lower birthrates and less people in the productive age brackets. The earth have enough resources to feed the current population many times over but not its greed, meat is incredibly inefficient as food, only 1% to 4% of the fed calories are converted into food, that without mentioning emissions, water usage, deforestation, soil contamination and the ethical problem of enslaving torturing and killing billions of sentient creatures just for sensory pleasure.

[koningrobot]

> how much livestock is grown and slaughtered specifically for leather

Yes and, I would hope that the majority of leather comes from cattle that are grown and slaughtered for meat. In that case, the amount of cattle put through the meat grinder is a function of both the demand for meat and the demand for leather, but it would be unlikely to be sensitive to both at the same time. I suspect, given that meat has so much turnover whereas leather lasts a long time, that we are meat-bound rather than hide-bound.

[roumenguha]

I don't believe it is.