The Sunset Park-based Modern Meadow makes synthetic, vegan leather. Instead of ripping and tanning the skin of dead mammals, the company produces leather made in an old industrial building on the East River.

“Biofabrication enables us to grow nature’s materials using living cells instead of animals,” according to Modern Meadow. “We grow collagen, a protein you find in animal skin, from which we create a leather ‘hide’. Depending on the desired features, we design and engineer the material to deliver the right structural and aesthetic properties. We then tan and finish it through an efficient, ecologically mindful process to give the material its final character.”

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