According to Four Paws, a global animal welfare organization, the leather industry kills an estimated 1 billion cattle, sheep, and goats per year.
And that statistic doesn’t account for the millions of wild animals used for exotic leather goods, like lizards, stingrays, kangaroos, ostriches, alligators, and crocodiles.
In addition to the toll it takes on animals, the leather industry also has a high cost on the environment.
Leather is largely a byproduct of the cattle industry, which contributes to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale.
When demand for beef outpaces demand for leather, unused hides are burnt or sent to landfills.
According to the Leather and Hide Council of America, up to 5.5 million hides were wasted in 2019 in the US alone — enough leather to make 110 million footballs.
It’s a problem that’s led to a myriad of “vegan” leather alternatives in the last decade, with fashion, furniture, and automobile companies turning to leather made from pineapple waste, seaweed, mushrooms, and cork.
In 2019, Mexican entrepreneurs — and longtime friends — Adrián López Velarde and Marte Cázarez Duarte threw their hats in the vegan leather trade by becoming the first people to make leather from nopales, or prickly pear cactus.
The two initially met while studying abroad in Taiwan, when they became fast friends over their shared birthdays.
They stayed in touch even as Cázarez Duarte pursued fashion and López Velarde entered the automotive industry — and later found that they had a shared interest in challenging the spaces they were soon leading.
“We were not happy about all the contamination that we were causing the environment,” Cázarez Duarte told Elle in 2024. “We started asking, ‘How can we improve this industry [from within]?’”
On a ranch they shared in Zacatecas, Mexico, the duo began planting prickly pear cacti, watering the crops with rainwater, and then cutting off the leaves as they matured.
In the last six years, Desserto has partnered with Adidas, Otterbox, Michael Kors, Fossil, BMW, and more to make plant-based outfits, shoes, bags, phone cases, watch bands, and whole car interiors.
“What we want to achieve is to create a material as sustainable as possible, but at the same time, complies with the standards of the different industries,” López Velarde said in a statement.
“We are conscious of the environmental impact that the materials have in the world, and we are here to change them,” Cázarez Duarte added.
Since 2019, the spotlight on López Velarde and Cázarez Duarte has grown even larger.
In 2023, the team was celebrated at the inaugural Latin American Fashion Awards as a Responsible Project of the Year honoree.
In 2024, actress Morena Baccarin wore a cocktail dress made out of Desserto cacti leather at the premiere of “Deadpool and Wolverine.”
More recently, they helped Chipotle pull off their latest “Responsible Restaurant” design by furnishing their new dining rooms entirely with prickly pear cactus leather.
“There are many changes happening in the world,” López Velarde said, “and Desserto is one of them.”
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Header image via Desserto
