Meet BM Leather: The leather made from the residue left behind while brewing beer

Here’s one more reason to love beer! Developed as a 100% environmentally-friendly, animal-friendly and chemically free alternative to leather, BM Leather takes one of the wasted by-products of beer-brewing and turns it into a fabric that mimics faux-leather, but will biodegrade (and even fertilize) when disposed. Designer Mi Zhou developed the material for Stella McCartney in a bid to make fashion much more sustainable, in a way that doesn’t create waste, but rather reduces it.

For every tonne of beer brewed, you’ve got a quarter of a tonne of beer mash, the residual grain/pulp, left behind from the brewing process. Converting this into a fabric, BM Leather uses a by-product in a way that upscales it into a fashion product. Produced in cooperation with Beavertown Brewery, Mi Zhou developed a leather-esque fabric out of the residual wet mash, which comprises mainly mashed grain, husk, sugars, and water. The vegan-friendly leather, developed keeping Stella McCartney’s brand ethos and commitment to animal and eco-friendly fashion, uses zero chemicals, is 100% natural, and can even be dyed in different colors, making it a great new material for fashion designers to toy with, and a lovely push for the fashion industry towards sustainability!

Designer: Mi Zhou for Stella McCartney

Sarang Sheth

Sarang is the co-editor in chief of Yanko Design. He is a former industrial designer at a Bangalore-based multidisciplinary design studio, working in areas including appliances, FMCG, packaging, technology, luxury, etc. Sarang has written about design and technology for over a decade and has been a jury member on international design awards. He occasionally works on tech concepts featured on Forbes, The Verge, Hypebeast, Digital Trends, SlashGear, Tom's Guide, LetsGoDigital, and Unbox Therapy. Sarang graduated from MIT Institute of Design, Pune.

See Full Bio