The vocabulary around alternative leather has expanded faster than any industry standard has followed it. Brands use "vegan leather," "plant-based leather," "eco leather," "bio-leather," "cruelty-free leather" and a dozen other terms, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes in ways that are technically distinct but designed to confuse. None of these terms is formally regulated the way organic food labelling is.
This post decodes the vocabulary. It will not make you feel better about the category as a whole. It should make you a better-informed buyer.
What "vegan leather" actually means
Vegan leather means no animal product was used. That is the full extent of what the label communicates. It tells you nothing about what the material is made of, how it is constructed, how it performs, how long it lasts, or what its environmental footprint looks like.
A piece of solid petroleum-derived PVC with no animal inputs is vegan leather. A material with a plant fibre base, bio-derived coatings and recycled backing is also vegan leather. They are extremely different things with identical labels.
The term is useful as a minimum filter: if you do not want animal leather, it tells you this is not animal leather. Beyond that, it communicates nothing useful. Any brand that leads with "vegan" and stops there is relying on a label to do work it is not capable of doing.
PU leather explained
Polyurethane leather is a coated material: a backing layer of some kind with a polyurethane coating on top. The backing is usually a textile - woven or non-woven polyester, sometimes nylon. The polyurethane provides surface feel, colour and water resistance.
PU leather is a broad category. At the cheapest end, the backing is a thin open-knit scrim and the coating is minimal - this is the construction that peels. At the better end, the backing is denser and heavier, the coating is thicker and more resistant to hydrolysis, and the product performs substantially better across its lifetime.
The label "PU leather" covers both of those things without distinguishing between them. That is the problem. Not the material class - the label.
PVC leather and why it is the worst option
Polyvinyl chloride - PVC - is the third common synthetic option, and it is the one to avoid. PVC is not breathable, cracks in cold temperatures, and eventually becomes brittle. It is produced with chlorine chemistry and cannot be recycled through most general waste streams. Most serious brands in this category have moved away from PVC. RebagCo.'s material contains no PVC.
The presence of PVC in a product is sometimes disclosed and sometimes not. If a material listing says only "synthetic leather" without specifying the polymer type, it may be PVC. It is worth asking directly.
Plant-based leather: what the plant part actually does
"Plant-based leather" suggests the material comes from plants. The reality is more specific than that.
In most plant-based leather products, plant material forms part of the base layer - the structural backing underneath the surface coatings. The plant fibre is processed and combined with binders to create a fibrous mat. The surface coatings - the part that provides water resistance, feel and colour - are applied on top of that base.
The plant material contributes to the base structure. It does not replace the polymer coatings at the surface. This means plant-based leather still contains polyurethane. It is a different ratio from pure PU leather, and the base layer has different structural properties, but the polymer is present.
Bio-polyurethane: the honest explanation
Some materials described as plant-based leather use bio-derived polyurethane, where some of the chemical inputs come from plant-derived sources rather than petroleum. The relevant term is bio-polyol: the polyol component of polyurethane can be made from plant oils or sugars instead of petroleum feedstocks. When this is done, the resulting polymer is called bio-PU.
Here is the part that matters: bio-PU is still polyurethane. It is polyurethane made with a partially plant-derived input. The chemistry is the same. The material behaves similarly. The difference is in the source of one of the chemical precursors - which affects how much of the carbon content is bio-based rather than fossil-based.
RebagCo.'s material is built on a plant fibre base with bio-polyurethane layers. It contains polyurethane. Any brand that describes a similar material as "PU-free" is not telling you the truth about what is in the product. A brand that refuses to confirm whether its material contains polyurethane is the warning sign in this category - not the brand that says plainly it does.
How to read a product page
When you land on a product page for something described as plant-based leather, look for these things.
First: does the brand name what the material actually is? Not the brand name for the material, but the actual composition. Fibre type, polymer type, any certifications. Bellroy names its alternative materials explicitly on product pages - MIRUM (natural rubber, cork, soy, biomass charcoal) and INNOVERA (bio-based polymer, plant protein, recycled nylon). Nappa Dori labels one of its lines "recycled PU" directly on the product page. Both are examples of honest labelling. If a brand will not tell you what is in the material, that is information.
Second: does the description tell you about the base layer or only about the surface? "Soft, supple and leather-like" is a surface description. It tells you nothing about whether the material will hold together over time.
Third: what certifications are present? PETA-approved vegan status, GRS certification, ASTM D6866 bio-based content testing - these are not guarantees of quality, but they are evidence that a supplier has had the material independently tested. Our guide to what PETA-approved, GRS and ASTM D6866 actually mean covers what each certification verifies and, importantly, what none of them tell you.
The one plain statement this category needs
Most plant-based leathers contain polyurethane. This includes high-quality, credible, well-designed products. It includes RebagCo.'s material. Polymer content is not a flaw - it is the mechanism that provides water resistance, surface durability and structural integrity. The question is not whether a material contains polymer. It is what kind, how much, and how it is used in the construction.
A brand claiming its plant-based leather contains no polymers, nothing synthetic, or nothing fossil-derived is describing something that does not currently exist in any mainstream commercial form. That claim should make you more sceptical, not less.
If you want to go deeper on what the layers inside the material actually do and why the plant-fibre base matters more than the surface, our guide to what plant-based leather is actually made of covers the full structure - including how to interpret bio-based content percentages, which are more complicated than most brands let on.
The Keeper Card Case and the Slim Edit Wallet are good entry points if you want to assess the material in a smaller format before committing to a larger bag.
RebagCo. offers 14-day free returns on all orders. Use them to form your own view of the material.