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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

The thing is... this is not a solved problem, by far.

You forget all that leather used in a myriad of products, that leather comes from cows. Or feathers and down from various birds. Or the other million side products of animal husbandry, that I'm not even aware of. I think almost every part of a cow is used in an industrial process, not much is wasted.

Plus, this needs a totally vegan solution and you're wiping out any and all dairy products: cheeses (all 100 million of them), yogurt, regular milk, sour milk, sour cream, whey, etc.

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The entire western market isn't going to simultaneously and instantly stop eating meat. There won't suddenly be a day when all the herds are culled because everyone finally stopped eating meat at once. If it ever happens (I'm hopeful but not optimistic), it will be a gradual process, and industries will have lots of time to adapt.

But even that aside, it's not our duty as consumers to keep eating animals to keep industry able to make shoes and cheese.

Who said anything about duty? :-)))

My point is, what are we going to replace those with? Especially leather & co. They have real life applications, they're not just fads. Plus, will those replacement products be sustainable? Vegan leather is just rebranded plastic, for example.

I'm equally curious, but I don't know the numbers, if replacing plastic packaging with paper/cardboard is environmentally sound. I remember back in the day efforts to reduce paper consumption, I think our sustainable paper production capacity was near its limits.

Cactus leather is a new trend. I don't own any cactus leather products so I can't say how good it is, but surely it's possible to replace cowhide with something.

Even vegan (plastic) leather is significantly better from an environmental and emissions perspective than cowhide leather. The tanning process is not exactly eco-friendly, and neither is raising cows.

There's synthetic leather too.

And there's vegan cheese https://www.reddit.com/r/vegancheesemaking

and of course vegan yogurt etc. (you can make yogurt with coconut milk for example)

> There's synthetic leather too.

...and it sucks as a replacement for genuine leather.

It doesn't have to, Alcantara is extremely robust and a great replacement for leather, just as one example. But the synthetic leather in cheap products aiming to look like real smooth leather, I think this is the one you mean, time and time again is so inferior it's almost a scam. Shoes will fall apart quickly, sofas, clothing will peel off after 2-3 years when the softener has gassed out.

>vegan cheese

My old boss was vegan (or rather his wife was and he was very accommodating of her diet, he would still eat meat outside the home). He would always mention that the fanciest, most expensive vegan cheese option out there set itself apart from the rest with the tagline "It melts!" on the packaging. Vegan cheese has to come a long way to be anywhere comparable to real cheese. The same applies to synthetic leather, by the way.

It depends on what you are looking for with the vegan cheese. If you want something to go with a charcuterie plate, there are really good cultured cashew milk cheeses. They are more akin to cheese spreads though, something like this [0]

But if you are looking for something like a slice of cheddar or vegan mac-n-cheese the options are really pretty terrible and all have an aftertaste like you just ate a spoonful of Crisco.

[0] https://miyokos.com/products/classic-double-cream-chive-chee...

Not knowing anything about vegan cheeses, are there options that would be something similar to say brie, camembert, emmental, fontina, gruyère, havarti, manchego, parmigiano reggiano, or roquefort?

There might be some I'm not really sure for the specific varieties you have listed above. A vegan gouda seems to be a pretty standard thing for some of the manufacturers. So there are definitely some trying to make things outside the typical cheddar, swiss, mozzarella.

I don't think I have ever seen something trying to imitate any really soft (brie) or blue (roquefort) cheeses.

There are several products lined up to come out next year that use casein produced by genetically modified plants. There are already products with similar whey protein from plants on the market. For example I've been loving Brave Robot ice cream.

Isn't synthetic leather just plastic? That's not really better for the environment.

There are some that are plant based.

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