One of the greatest difficulties for stylists and designers is to find materials with sustainable, ecological and / or animal cruelty-free characteristics; that are also easily accessible, as the topic of sustainability is still taking its first steps in the sector. This makes the products difficult to find or difficult to purchase due to the minimum quantities required for its purchase. That’s why today I want to talk to you about a product that I found a few months ago and that I recently had the opportunity to get to know better and work with vegan skin.
Desserto, vegan leather project based on nopal / prickly pear (Opuntia cactus); created by the Mexicans Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez; with the aim of offering an alternative to animal skin and at the same time reducing environmental pollution.
In an interview with Marte Cázarez co founder of Adriano di Marti, the company that contains Desserto; we were able to gather important information to better understand this product.
The main point is to understand why they decided to work with nopal as a raw material. The reason is very simple; Opuntia Cactus as this species is known abounds in several regions of Mexico and its use extends from gastronomic to medicinal; it is a plant rich in properties and very easy to grow, since it needs very little water to live. It can use rainwater as a source of subsistence and live long periods even without it; as it absorbs moisture from the environment. Being a little more specific, 1 kilo of this plant occupies 300 liters of water in 8 months of growth.
Life cycle
The degradation of this material has been estimated in 3-5 years for the resin of the prickly pear which constitutes the upper part of the skin, the support on the contrary can vary, since it uses cotton, polyester or the sum of both, giving an estimate of 3 to 10 years. He also told us that within the goals for the future of this product is to develop a base or support also in prickly pear, thus reducing its period of degradation after discarding.
A fact that seemed very important to me is that they manage a stock of the fabric in their facilities to facilitate the use of this material by small entrepreneurs, thus contributing to the diffusion and democratization of sustainability.
If you want to know more about this project, we invite you to follow us on our social networks, as we will have Marte Cázerez as a guest in a LIVE Q&A question and answer in which he will help us solve the concerns that we have not done in this article.
