“I’m alive, I have a life, my flesh is alive. Why should I eat something that’s dead?”
- RZA, Tao of Wu

As you might of guessed by RZA's dietary leanings, we don't use any animal leather at 36 Chambers.

We have various reasons for why we forgo animal leather. For RZA, it has to do with animal cruelty first and foremost. Speaking for myself, the deleterious environmental effects of raising animals (in particular cattle) is what drew me into looking more into vegan leather options.

The field of vegan leather is still relatively young, and new types are continuously making their way to market. We recently came across pineapple leather, which we're excited to check out in the near future.

One promising aspect of a plant-based leather is that it is biodegradable. The biggest downside of current plastic-based leather is that it takes about 500 years to break down, whereas animal leather decomposes in 50 years.