A Spanish businesswoman has created a textile woven from the fibers of pineapple leaves. Carmen Hijosa is a clothes designer by trade and having abandoned leather on environmental grounds spent eight years developing her alternative textile, which she calls Pinatex. Pineapple fibers are very fine and strong and flexible. Pinatex looks like leather but doesn’t feel like leather. It’s its own material. When it gets wet it dries like leather and it behaves like leather in every way except it’s completely sustainable.

Hijosa founded the company Ananas Anam to market Piñatex. She works with pineapple farmers in the Philippines who harvest and strip the fibers, which are finished into Piñatex in Spain. To make one square meter of Piñatex takes 460 leaves - but there’s no shortage of raw material. Global pineapple production topped 25 million tons in 2016.

Since its commercial launch in 2015, Piñatex has been used by about 500 manufacturers, including vegan sneakers sold by fashion house Hugo Boss. The leather industry has its critics. Aside from the resources needed to raise cattle to slaughter, the industry uses chemicals with tannery waste containing large amounts of pollutants. So pineapples aren’t just good to eat. They can also be good to wear.