Leather tanning sustainability counts. In other words, one can express it by a number, a reference value. LHCA, the Leather and Hide Council of America, pinpointed it properly: it is worth 5.5 million. Looking at data provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, throughout 2019 US slaughterhouses have been processing over 33 million livestock units. Just for the records, international leather tanning industry made use of 27.5 million raw hides and skins. As regards the remaining 5.5 million hides, LHCA pointed out: “They discarded them or disposed of them in dumps”. We are talking about 5.5 million raw hides, which are a by-product from the livestock and farming industry: conversely, drums might have brought them to a new life on fashion and design.
Leather tanning sustainability
“Fashion also means sustainability – remarked Stephen Sothmann, LHCA Chief Executive Officer –. When brands and buyers compare leather to its alternative options, they have no doubts at all: other materials cannot match leather”. In fact, leather is durable, versatile and attractive: most of all, it is green. People had better get aware of it quickly, since fostering synthetic materials will reduce the market shares of leather tanning products.
Info graphics on damages
As we said, if drums had processed those 5.5 million raw hides, which they conversely disposed of in dumps, they could have done something valuable. As summarized by LHCA on their information chart, they could have made finished materials serving 99 million pairs of shoes, or 110 million soccer balls, or 2 million sofas. Americans do not just regret for those products, which they never manufactured. They actually send a warning. “Without leather tanning industry, every year about one billion kilos of bovine hides would be discarded in dumps – pointed out Sothmann –. Impact on the environment would be considerably heavy, not to mention that fashion is making use of synthetic alternative options, which derive from plastic and other non-renewable sources”. Leather tanning is circular: we wonder about the other materials. “There are no substitutes”, wrapped up LHCA.
