I’m in need of a new belt, my current belt looking like it’ll break at the point it buckles. So I decided to find the most Earth-friendly leather-substitute. That seems to be mycelium, a material made from mushrooms. OK, fine, I google for a mycelium belt.
What do I get? Not sites that sell mycelium belts. I did however, get four or five links to sites selling pictures of such belts. Not the belts themselves, just pictures.
So anyone know where I can buy such a belt?
That’s because it’s mostly just a concept.
Here is a serious web site talking about it:
Note that article was from 6 years ago and they still don’t have it for sale in their store.
I do find reports of people who have sold “mycelium” or “mushroom leather” belts, but they are mostly plastic with a little bit of mushroom mixed in as a gimmick. It’s not nearly durable enough to actually work in practice. If you want a natural, vegan, Earth-friendly leather substitute, cork belts exist and are really easy to find.
Sure, if you don’t mind peeling the bark off of a helpless cork oak tree.
Just kidding. It reportedly does not harm the tree.
I was looking at cork belts too while trying to find mycelium belts, some look pretty nice. They’re lightweight (almost half as heavy as leather), resist water and scratches, and seem to last as long as a leather belt would last for me. (3 years or so.)
I didn’t even know they exist before trying to look up a mushroom belt, and now I think my next belt is going to be a cork one.
You might want to give synthetic materials another look. On the one hand, my belt is made of synthetic materials, which are in some sense non-renewable… but on the other hand, it’s like 20 years old. A “non-renewable” belt that lasts for decades might actually be more eco-friendly than a “renewable” one that lasts for a couple of years.
Excellent point.
I just ordered a cork belt. I expect it’s actually cork put around some other material, probably plastic. Cork isn’t really strong enough to endure the rigors that belts undergo.
Maybe you could settle for a Mycenaean belt?
Try a paracord belt. Very strong, pretty cheap, and in an emergency could be handy.
Oh, yes, there is definitely something to be said for Cordura, Dyneema, etc.
In my experience, paracord is 100% Nylon, a decent choice, whether woven out of actual small-diameter cord or not. Polyester is also an option. At the end of the day, you also want it to look nice, but one is hardly lacking for choice of durable synthetic materials. I think a kevlar webbing belt would last a few years.
Why not leather? It’s essentially a useful industrial byproduct, and probably isn’t materially contributing to much pollution in its own right, at least when compared to the meat industry.
Not as Earth-friendly as is often assumed:
If the concern is how Earth-friendly the belt is, how about a leather belt but a used one purchased from a vintage clothing or Goodwill store?
Sure, but that’s a sunk cost, for lack of a better term. The carbon emissions from cattle raising are happening whether or not the hides get used or thrown in a landfill, because people want to eat the cows. Another way to look at it is that demand for leather is NOT driving the raising and slaughter of cattle. That’s beef production that does that. The article’s authors assume that because leather is valuable, that it’s not a byproduct. That’s incorrect- what makes it a byproduct isn’t its value, it’s whether or not it’s what is driving production. And in this case, the primary reason is beef. Which makes everything else byproducts, from tallow, to bones, to leather.
Put differently, that cow was raised and died for beef. Whatever CO2 emissions were incurred for that cow, they happened in the process of beef raising, and would have happened regardless of whatever they did with the hide. So you may as well use it. And if you manage to find an alternative that isn’t zero emissions, you’re actually adding extra CO2 above and beyond the emissions for the cow’s beef.