Success for COTANCE after ‘very important day’ for leather
18/04/2018
Leather was one of only a small number of industries to secure the right to present its findings and the results of pilot exercises, all with a view to receiving formal recognition of leather as a ‘green’ product. Each industry had to present detailed information about the product environmental footprint category rules (PEFCR) it had developed.
After the presentation, the 28-person committee, comprising representatives of the European Commission, European Union member state governments, industry and non-governmental organisations, overwhelmingly approved leather’s PEFCR, with 20 votes in favour, zero votes against and eight abstentions.
This is the culmination of five years’ work that COTANCE has carried out with partners across Europe, with Italian tanning industry body UNIC weighing in particularly strongly.
If the steering committee gives its approval to the work the leather industry has done on the material’s environmental footprint, it will bring the pilot exercise to a successful conclusion.
Further discussion will now need to take place about the future use of the environmental footprint category rules that have come out of the project, but COTANCE secretary general, Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano, was delighted by the response of the steering committee. He said: “This is a very important day for the leather industry.”
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