evidence: Vegan leather is in the news for being, well, plastic. Most of the alternatives offered by the fashion industry are petroleum-based products but the car industry, at least, might be getting it right in calling that more "sustainable" than animal skin. A New York Times report last week pointed out the appetite for synthetic fabrics means the label "vegan" may imply "sustainable" when that isn’t always the case. Vegan leather is usually made of plastics, which isn’t renewable, and, along with other synthetic fabrics, can add to the build-up of ocean microplastics and the general plastic landfill burden. One of the problems with fashion’s use of vegan leather is that a lot of it is in so-called "fast" fashion: high turnover, cheap brands that source materials and labor as cheaply as possible and try to get us all on board with the celeb-style idea you can’t be seen in the same thing twice. It’s been effective, the fast fashion industry was worth $91 billion in 2021 and that’s only going one way: up.