Science Turning peanuts into leather bags

[thomas]

A company in Japan's peanut heartland of Chiba has devised a way to make faux leather out of peanut skins that would otherwise go to waste. In Kashiwa, Kashiwa Leather includes purses, wallets and knapsacks among the eight peanut leather products in its lineup. It gets the skins from Kimura Peanuts, located in Tateyama.

Peanut Leather is about 1 millimeter thick and does not use any dye, with its brown color coming from the peanut skins themselves. It is made water-resistant with PVC. Fifteen kilograms of peanut skins can make a leather sheet 90 centimeters wide and 100 meters long, according to Kashiwa Leather. [...] Making leather from animal hides normally involves tanning, cutting and sewing. For Peanut Leather, the skins are turned into fine powder, processed into long, thin sheets, and then finished to look like animal leather. Because peanut-skin leather is unprecedented, it took Kashiwa Leather about a year of trial and error to develop it. The company failed to make leather out of peanut shells, and about a dozen contractors approached could not provide suitable skin-crushing services. Peanut Leather is a promising innovation because the quality can be made uniform, much like synthetic textiles. With animal leather, parts are discarded over size or quality considerations. There are cases where the animal's small size limits what products can be made.

Paywall alert:

Bag of peanuts: Japanese company turns legumes into leather

New material saves skins from being discarded

asia.nikkei.com

Link:

ORIGINAL LEATHER BAG | Peanuts&Co powered by BASE

ピーナッツカンパニーは、古き良き物を尊敬し、今この時代を生きながら、他にはない良き物作りが出来ることを心掛けております。固定観念に囚われず、ひと味違ったもの、驚きのあるもの、楽しい物作りをみな様のもとへALL GOOD THINGS

shop.peanutscompany.com

 

[johnnyG]

Kind of like peanut skins to plowshares?

 

[Grandpa Frank]

I love mine and it smells so fine !