From real to fake to faux to man-made to ecological to vegan

Your vegan hand bag is made of plastic. What is the plastic used to make your “vegan leather” handbag?

From Wikipedia: “Plastics are typically organic polymers of high molecular mass and often contain other substances. They are usually synthetic, most commonly derived from petrochemicals, however, an array of variants are made from renewable materials…”

Plastic is used to replace leather as an inexpensive alternative. What is remarkable is the changes in nomenclature used to sell it. Maybe in the past buying fake leather may have made you feel “cheap”. But buying vegan leather may make you feel virtuous, and you may be willing to pay more for vegan than for fake,

Be aware that the same advertising techniques are used in advertising for skin care products, except that lying is easier. Why is that? Trying to sell you plastic as leather would be illegal. But selling you “naturally derived” synthetic ingredients is not going to break the law, because “naturally derived” means nothing.

Don’t buy products containing preservatives consisting of “grapefruit seed extract”. Grapefruit seed has not enough antimicrobial chemicals to make it an effective preservative, so somebody is lying to you. Maybe the grapefruit seed paste was used as raw material to synthesize chemicals that have antimicrobial power (grapefruit seeds don’t), or maybe the real extract has been adulterated. Scientific studies found that when something sold as “grapefruit seed extract” had antimicrobial effect, it  contained benzethonium chloride, or other synthetic preservatives (other commercially available products contained triclosan, benzalkonium chloride or methyl paraben). If it didn’t, it had no preservative activity.

There are many roles for plastics and for all kinds of synthetic chemicals and I have no objection to them. But I do object to selling plastic as vegan leather or synthetic ingredients as “naturally derived”. Everything on earth is naturally derived, by definition, even if the chemical at the end is unrecognizable. I don’t like it when advertising tries to fool me. There are no white lies in advertising.