Pineapple skin: how to get high-quality skin analogue from unnecessary leaves

Pineapple, as you know, is a cultivated herbaceous plant that, after a single harvest, becomes unnecessary. The growth point dies, and the outlet begins to give lateral shoots. But these same pineapple leaves, which are a waste of production, are in fact also excellent raw materials. It turns out that a lot of useful things can be made from them, including shoes that are difficult to distinguish from high-quality leather.

In countries where the culture of growing pineapple has been developed for several centuries, people have learned to use its hard leaves. Fibers obtained from leaves were used for weaving mats and making dense fabrics. But the possibilities of pineapple leaves are much wider, and this was proved by the designer Carmen Hies from Ireland.

Impressed by visiting dirty and environmentally hazardous tanneries in the Philippines, Carmen decided to create an artificial analogue of the skin that would be obtained by processing plant fibers. After studying various options for raw materials, the designer came to the conclusion that pineapple leaves would be ideal for her purposes.

The material created as a result of many years of experimentation is called Pinatex. The method of obtaining it is quite laborious, but still it is very profitable, given the fact that the raw materials are leaves, which usually rot and die after the fruiting of pineapple. The collected leaves are subjected to special processing, after which the necessary fibers are extracted from them, which are used for further production of materials.

Carmen Hiesa demonstrated the results of her work at one of the exhibitions and amazed visitors with high-quality artificial leather. Pinatex in its properties is almost indistinguishable from the original, so it immediately attracted the attention of a well-known shoe manufacturer. In addition to shoes, many other useful things can be made from this material.