European approval of Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR), applied to leather, will supposedly offer a number of advantages to companies. Mostly in terms “of time and resources saving in order to carry out some studies, such as product LCA: in fact, after a remarkable technical and scientific endeavour, we succeeded in providing users with a handy tool. Prior to this accomplishment, which makes European guidelines commonly oriented, each country was compliant with different regulations”, pointed out Michele Galatola, from the Environment General Directorate (DG-ENV) of the European Commission, while giving speech at the conference, focused on the issue, held during Lineapelle95 edition. Facing an audience composed of leather industry experts and professionals, Andreas Kindermann, president of Cotance (the European federation of tanning associations) rejoiced: “Just by the time sustainability turned out to be the key point of the industry, we have been investing a lot of labour, over the years, in this project: now it has come true at last”. Some researchers from CNR, together with some professionals from UNIC- Italian Tanneries and ICEC, the Institute of Quality Certification for the Leather Sector, participated in the meeting on PEFCR. During the meeting, they also held a debate with leather entrepreneurs, suppliers of chemicals and machinery, brands. “Since 2010, when the relationship between industry and sustainability, whose discussion had been merely ideological, turned into a competitiveness factor on the market – wrapped up Galatola – we realized that it was high time we were taking action by implementing 27 trial projects, among which the one about leather. We met up with the industry’s representatives, and sometimes we also had an argument with them”.
