Asturias woman's pineapple-leaf 'leather' earns European Inventor Award nomination

A BRITISH resident is up for an award from the EU for inventing 'leather' from pineapple leaves – a no-kill and environmentally-friendly solution that looks just like the real thing and is suitable for shoes, belts, handbags and other hard-wearing accessories.

Carmen Hijosa, 69, is from Asturias in Spain's far north, but has been living between the UK and the Republic of Ireland since she was 19, and her business premises is in London.

“The material I've invented is made from discarded pineapple leaves, which are about a metre long,” Carmen explains.

“These leaves are of little value otherwise – normally, farmers just leave them to rot – but you can use them to create a thread that is then turned into a material which we are transporting to Spain from The Philippines.”

She has been nominated by the European Patents Office (EPO) for the European Inventor Award 2021.

EPO chairman António Campinos – from Portugal – says Carmen has been pre-selected in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) category.

The leather-like material, named Piñatex, is suitable for use in household decorations, furniture and car upholstery as well as clothing, footwear and accessories, meaning it is built to last – although various plant-based alternatives to leather are on the market, in response to the growing demand for vegan products, they are mainly designed to be biodegradable. 

This is not ideal for goods that need to 'go the distance' and, effectively, live forever.

“Why is [Piñatex] more sustainable? Firstly, because we're working with farmers in extreme poverty in The Philippines, using a material that they had never considered as a source of income before,” Carmen Hijosa explains.

“Secondly, we're not extracting raw material from the earth – it's a circular economy.

“We have a product which doesn't need land, water or chemicals, and which provides employment for people who are very poor.”

Philippine farmers – who are mainly women – collect up their pineapple leaves after harvest and extract the fibre from them, then take it to the Piñatex factory set up in the far-eastern country, where this fibre is cleaned and purified using bio-enzime products.

It is then turned into reels of thread, which are transported to Catalunya where, through a refining process, it is woven into a leather-like material to be sold to shoe and handbag factories.

Leather, although a by-product of the meat industry – meaning animals are not killed for their hide, but instead for food, and their hide reused – is controversial for several reasons.

Firstly, those who do not eat meat consider there should not be an industry for leather to become a by-product of, although 'guilt-free' cow's leather can be purchased from India and Nepal, where the bovine species is sacred and cannot be killed, meaning leather goods are made from the hide of cows who have died from natural causes.

Secondly, huge amounts of natural resources are needed to breed enough cows to keep up with demand for meat and for leather, including land and water; for the dairy market alone, breeding requirements are much more reduced.

Thirdly, tanning the leather creates a massive pollution risk, given that it involves heavy use of chemicals.

And fourthly, working conditions in tanneries are often extremely poor, precarious and badly paid.