Leather is fine and probably the most environmentally friendly material in an Apple product. I just wish it was cruelty free, but the alternative is a lot worse imo
Edit: I'll also add that there's no such thing as a "leather cow." It's just a byproduct of the beef industry, so it's not like ditching leather will save animal lives. As always, this is Apple finding an environmentalist message to excuse cheapening their products
To be fair, they said they’re ditching the leather products because of how much water they need to be produced compared to non-leather options.
Leather is a byproduct of the beef industry.
At no point will any fewer cattle be 'processed' for meat because of this decision.
What does change is the utility ratio of the beasts. Well use less of each beast making the tragedy of their death more meaningless.
Leather is far more environmentally friendly than plastics, with a small caveat for the tanning process' chemicals, and emissions from the beasts themselves (though that's attributable to beef production.)
Leather doesn't degrade into micro plastics.
So unless Apple is also reducing its beef consumption* by the equivalent amount it's pointless.
* yes, it'll be non-zero.
Guess we should all eat increasingly less beef then
Yes.
This is wrong in so many ways.
Making cows(not beasts) less viable to grow because they are more expensive because the farmers aren't getting money for their other body parts is a win!
Less leather bought = more expensive cows = less people able to afford cows = less cows murdered.
Just remember it's always about the profits.
Just like how they stopped selling chargers for the sake of reducing e-waste. Even though they can save on shipping weights and charge extra for 1st party chargers.
Now is it worse for the environment to produce extra chargers and cables? Or the secondary purchases, shipping, and manufacturing? I can't tell you the actual impact.
Oh and remember the absolute trash 1A/5V charging bricks they included for the longest time ever? They hardly even pushed out 18w bricks before they nixed the entire included charger crap.
If the drive for profits pushes companies to use more recycled materials and reduced their carbon footprint , that’s a good thing right? In the same way that Apple have decided that privacy is a marketing differentiator
Good. But fuck that faux pleather stuff too though, it doesn't last long and is just microplastics waiting to end up in the environment. Get proper stainless steel one or even a good quality NATO strap.
They're doing a woven material. The article I saw said the rumor was using recycled nylon and polyester in some manner, but that was a rumor and I don't know if it's confirmed. But you could absolutely make a decent, reasonably rugged phone case with something in approximately the neighborhood of canvas.
Stopping trying to be leather when it sucked was needed. If you're not doing a relatively high quality grade of leather, it can't handle the abuse, and what Apple had recently wasn't that.
I mean, polyester and nylon are also petroleum-based so will eventually degrade into microplastics as well...
Hermés bands will still be actual leather, right? That’s a whole brand thing with them.
They aren’t
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