Herman Miller now offers plant-based leather on its iconic lounge chair

Can you yet consciousness guilt-free astir buying an iconic portion of furnishings that starts astatine $6,395? For nan first clip successful 68 years, Herman Miller is offering its Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman pinch a plant-based upholstery action that looks and feels for illustration leather but is chiefly made from bamboo.

The plant-based fabric, called Banbū, was developed by von Holzhausen and first launched backmost successful 2020 arsenic a durable replacement to some leather derived from animals and vegan leathers made utilizing plastic-based materials for illustration polyurethane. Banbū is made by chopping up bamboo and extracting fibers that are spun into a yarn that tin beryllium woven into fabrics. Those fabrics are past treated pinch a plant-based topcoat sealant, according to von Holzhausen’s website. The institution says Banbū is arsenic “buttery-soft and soft arsenic lambskin” and claims nan worldly is one-third nan weight of cattle leather while besides taking little than 250 days to biodegrade successful a landfill.

Bamboo plants are highly renewable, increasing quickly without nan request for fertilizers aliases irrigation, allowing nan works to beryllium harvested sustainably without deforestation. Herman Miller claims nan plant-based leather reduces nan chair’s c footprint by “up to 35 percent,” but von Holzhausen hasn’t shared specifics connected really it makes Banbū, including nan biology effect of breaking down nan bamboo and what different materials are utilized successful nan manufacturing process.

Using bamboo to make pseudo-leather mightiness person a smaller c footprint than utilizing existent leather from cows, but nan Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman still characteristic analyzable designs, pinch layers of wood veneers that are glued together and molded into style utilizing presses that use power and pressure.

If you want to support nan biology effect of your furnishings successful mind but still want a Herman Miller successful your home, an replacement is nan company’s Eames Molded Plastic Armchair. Although nan institution uses a akin manufacturing process involving power erstwhile making this chair, nan molded seats are made utilizing 100 percent postindustrial recycled integrative alternatively of lumber aliases bamboo, allowing them to beryllium recycled again erstwhile you’re fresh to redecorate. (Although they aren’t rather arsenic lounge-able.)