Due to its link with the meat industry, leather is often claimed to be a cause of the deforestation in vulnerable environments, such as the Amazon. Reports by NGOs have attempted to associate fashion brands and automotive companies to deforestation and leather is one of the commodities that may be subject to new due diligence requirements contained in proposed regulations in the EU, UK and possibly, the USA.

These concerns have given rise to considerable activity by the industry to improve transparency and traceability within the leather supply chain. Action has been taken to ensure, as far as possible, that the leather supply chain does not contain hides sourced from illegally deforested areas and to give confidence to downstream customers and consumers that their products are not contributing to deforestation.

However, it must be understood that leather does not drive the rearing of livestock. The production of leather is all but incidental to that. By extension, it does not drive deforestation. Research at the University of Montana has shown that demand for hides for leather has no direct influence on the number of animals reared and slaughtered. This means that even the best efforts of the leather sector will have a limited impact in the fight against illegal deforestation.

It must also be recognised that the illegal deforestation in the regions of concern is due to corruption, abuses of power, ‘land grabbing’ and ‘cattle laundering’. Even the most diligent companies could be misled on the provenance of the raw materials that they source, particularly from its indirect suppliers. Moreover, most tanneries are small, which exacerbates the challenge. As a customer of the meat industry, leather manufacturers are excluded from the first stages of the supply chain and are not involved in the sourcing and tracing of livestock

Furthermore, hides or skins are of little importance to the meat value chain; hides may represent as little as 0.8% of the animal’s value, and globally, up to 40% are simply thrown away.

The leather sector has very little scope to influence the upstream supply chain. Farmers are paid for the whole animal and receive no premium for the hide or skin. As such, hides and skins have no influence on the rearing of livestock. Hence, while the leather industry supports the elimination of deforestation-sourced raw materials from its supply chain, the limitations on its influence on that part of the supply chain must be recognised and expectations must be tempered with pragmatism. Stigmatising leather by defining it legally as a deforestation risk product is unfair and unhelpful.

Nonetheless, the global leather industry does not deny its place in supply chains that carry deforestation risks, and it will play its part in seeking to resolve the issues by pushing for increased transparency and traceability of raw materials. By engaging with our suppliers and insisting on change, leather manufacturers and their customers can be part of the solution.

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According to FAO data, there are around 1,600 million cattle, 1,150 million sheep and 1,000 million goats in the world.

The reasons for keeping animals are manifold and range from raising them for dairy and meat, to using them as a source of social prestige, assets, power or a convenient means of transport.

Livestock keeps our pastureland and its biodiversity in good shape.

Where livestock is farmed, animal welfare standards are essential and the EU Animal Welfare Policy includes the ”Five Freedoms for the Welfare of Farmed Animals”.  

Animal welfare is an ethical duty. An obligation that only has advantages; only well-groomed and healthy animals produce quality milk and, at the end of their lives, a tasty meat. Moreover, only well treated animals enjoy a healthy hide or skin, which tanners can then process into beautiful leather.

Conversely, a lack of or poor animal welfare has only adverse consequences. There is, of course, animal suffering, but also farmers enduring losses, and, at the end of the chain, a tanner who doesn’t get a quality feedstock. Animal diseases, parasitic attacks, injuries or skin allergies are all revealed when hides/skins are transformed into leather. 

Tanners can read hides and skins like in an open book. They can identify the way the animal has been treated during life and whether the slaughter and the flaying has been performed professionally. The less defects they find, the better the animals have been treated.

A good quality hide/skin yields a good quality leather. Where possible, European tanners pick and choose only the best. They invest time, resources and efforts in transparency and traceability so as to feed the information on defects back into their upstream supply chains and help continuously improve the quality through better animal welfare.

More quality leather means a more sustainable value chain; less waste, better ethics and more prosperity for everybody!

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Svenska Garveriidkareföreningen har tillsammans med ett 30-tal internationella läderorganisationer lämnat bifogade manifest till FNs Klimatkonferens COP26 i Glasgow 31 oktober – 12 november där vi manar till användning av naturliga material och utmanar COP26 att erkänna de cykliska och klimateffektiva egenskaperna hos naturfibrer och deras potential att minska klimatpåverkan från konsumentprodukter.

Our Materials Impact our Climate

The world needs materials that are sustainable, renewable, recyclable, biodegradable, and most importantly, do not add to the burden of atmospheric carbon.

Natural fibres, such as leather, cotton, wool, mohair, alpaca, silk, hemp and mycelium, are part of the biogenic carbon cycle and as such are comprised of carbon that has been in the atmosphere for a millennia.

These readily available raw materials, when ethically and properly produced, are an important replacement for fossil fuels, reducing the need for its extraction and retaining more carbon in the earth.

Furthermore, at the end of life, properly produced natural materials will biodegrade, limiting their impact and mitigating harmful emissions, such as microplastic pollution, often associated with the synthetic materials that they replace.

With particular reference to leather, the leather manufacturing sector upcycles an unavoidable waste from the food industry, to produce a versatile, durable, unique material, ideal for the circular economy that the world must move towards.

However, these same materials are often dismissed through a lack of understanding of the manufacturing process and its supply chain, or through the application of questionable science generally in the form of incomplete and incomparable or out-dated Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), and the marketing of new, often fossil fuel-based materials claiming unsubstantiated levels of sustainability.

As shown by some emerging climate science studies, such as the GWP* model, production and use of biogenic materials typically does not add to the warming burden of the atmosphere, and where it does, the effects are short-lived. This is in contrast to materials produced from fossil-fuels, which release carbon that has been locked in the earth’s core for a millennia, and will persist in the environment, contributing to climate change.

Therefore, we, the undersigned organisations, call on the COP26 forum to…

…Recognise the cyclical, climate efficient nature of natural fibres and their potential for a positive contribution to reducing the climate impacts of consumer products.

…Encourage the use of natural fibres wherever feasible and reduce unnecessary reliance on fossil-fuel-based materials.

…Support LCA methodologies that accurately account for the environmental impact of fossil-fuel based materials, including end of life properties.

…Promote ‘slow fashion’, durable products, and items that can be used many times, repaired and refurbished, and last for years.

Signatories to the Leather Manifesto

Associação Portuguesa dos Industriais de Curtumes (APIC – Portugal Tanners’s Association)

Asociación Española del Curtido (ACEXPIEL – Spanish Tanners’ Association)

Assocation of Dutch Hide Traders (V.N.H.)

Australiean Hide Skin and Leather Exporters’ Association Inc. (AHSLEA)

Cámara de la Industria de Curtiduría – México (CANALCUR)

Centre for the Brazilian Tanning Industry (CICB)

Centro Tecnológico das Indústrias do Couro (CTIC – Leather Center in Portugal)

China Leather Industry Association

Confederation of National Associations of Tanners and Dressers of the European Community (COTANCE)

Dutch Association of Leather Chemists & Technicians (NVLST)

International Council of Hides, Skins and Leather Traders Association (ICHSLTA)

International Council of Tanners (ICT)

International Union of Leather Technologists and Chemists Societies (IULTCS)

Fachverband der Textil-, Bekleidungs-, Schuh- und Lederindustrie – Berufsgruppe Ledererzeugende Industrie (Austrian Association of Textile, Clothing, Shoe and Leather Industry – Leather Producing Industry Group)

Fédération Française des Cuirs et Peaux (French Hides & Skins Federation)

Fédération Française Tannerie Megisserie (French Tanners Association)

Leather and Hide Council of America

Leather Cluster Barcelona

Leather and Hide Council of America

Leather Cluster Barcelona

Leather Naturally

Leather UK

Leather Working Group

One 4 Leather

Society of Leather Technologists and Chemists

Sustainable Leather Foundation

Swedish Tanners Association

Turkish Leather Industrialists Association (TLIA)

UNIC Concerie Italiane (Italian Tanneries Association)

Verband der Deutschen Lederindustrie e.V. (TUV – German Leather Federation)

Wirtschaftsverband Häute/Leder (WHL – German Hide and Leather Association)

Zimbabwe Leather Development Council

The leather industry has long argued that as a by-product, our raw materials, hides and skins, should not carry any environmental burden from the rearing of livestock. This is the concept of zero allocation.
What is at stake with zero allocation? There is a debate when determining the carbon footprint of animal by-products. Two sides oppose each other.

One side, which includes slaughterhouses, is convinced that the carbon emissions caused by a cow during its lifetime must be distributed among meat and milk and also all by-products.
For hides, this results in a carbon dioxide (CO2) burden derived from agriculture, which is added to leather. This gives a disadvantage to animal by-products compared to, for example, synthetic products.

The other side, including the tanners, stands for zero allocation. This means that only the products that the animal was reared for, i.e. meat and milk, should carry the CO2 burden from animal husbandry. Unlike the primary products of livestock rearing, meat and milk, by-products like hides and skins may not always be further processed (e.g. because the carbon footprint is too large), and become waste. In the 2008 and 2020 crises, this happened with a large number of hides and skins.

If the skins available worldwide were disposed of to landfill, their decomposition would create significant additional CO2, amounting to approximately 5 million tons of harmful climate gases.According to the US EPA emissions equivalencies calculator, that corresponds to the annual emissions of 1,087,400 average cars.
That’s quite a saving! Don’t waste this resource, use it!

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