ditto studiomkllc, looking into alternative materials for something less obnoxious is a good baby step.
I’ve struggled with this in my industry as well, and we’ve made some headway in replacing overmolded self-skinning urethane foam parts with injection molded parts that performed better. But that’s not what you are talking about.
The shock absorption, tight fit, color matching, and low cost for volume manufacturing are the attractive parts of the Santoprene elastomer overmolding. Even if you broke out the grip parts into a smaller assembly (thus being able to recycle the larger components) you’d still be wrestling with more screws/bosses/cost… and does the customer really care anyway?
Maybe there’s some paint or spray deposition type process that would be ok.