Is PU Leather an Eco Friendly Alternative to PVC?

Using animal leather in goods and accessories is no longer seen as ‘luxury’.

As the world looks toward cruelty free ways to manufacture products, vegan leather alternatives have become more and more popular.

Yet while this can help reduce the environmental impacts of leather production, making vegan leather can come with its own problems. At Caseco, we want to be completely open and honest with our customers, so here is why we made the decision to use PU vegan leather instead of PVC.

 

Plastic Planet

As many of us are aware, PVC is made in ways that are harmful to the environment, particularly if the manufacturing company isn’t careful with how they deal with the pollution it causes. When it first was discovered, PVC seemed like it would be the answer to everything, but because it was so cheap to manufacture, this encouraged companies to mass-produce cheap disposable accessories. These items were of poor quality and quickly became unusable, meaning that customers simply throw them away and bought another one.

This led to more and more plastic ending up in our landfill and gave PVC a bad reputation, meaning that many customers went back to real leather because of its durability.

Photo by Ella Ivanescu on Unsplash

Why Caseco Uses PU Leather

In order to make quality eco friendly phone cases, Caseco needed an alternative to PVC . While it can be made in a more durable way, it just wasn’t good enough for our customers, and the environmental cost of making it was too high. For this reason, we use PU in our products, and produce them in small batches. Here’s why PU is better:

1. It Doesn’t Absorb Water
Not only does this help to protect your phone case, it also means that it is easy to clean.

2. It’s 100% Cruelty Free
PU is completely vegan. No animals are used in making our eco friendly phone cases, we even use vegan glue.

3. Better For the Environment
PU leather doesn’t use the same amount of harmful chemicals in its production that PVC does, such as dioxins. This means that when it is disposed of, it won’t release these chemicals either and requires much less petroleum and water to create.

4. Colour
PU is easy to dye and doesn’t need harsh chemicals or bleaching. This means we can give you a wide range of two-toned phone cases that look and feel amazing.

5. Durability
PU leather lasts for a long time. This means that you won’t need to throw out your phone case for another one every few months, and it will protect your phone from bumps and scrapes.

Looking to the Future

Right now, PU leather is the best vegan leather on the market for eco-friendly phone cases, which is why Caseco uses it. It may be more expensive than PVC, but we want to create a product that is strong, durable, and that will last for years.

We’re always open to innovation and hope that high-quality plant leather that is suitable for use in eco-friendly phone cases will be available to use in the years to come. If you are interested in the materials we use to make our products, you can find out more here.