Leather industry bodies have joined forces to ask the COP26 summit to recognise the benefits of using leather and other natural materials instead of allowing brands and consumers to develop an “unnecessary reliance” on synthetic alternatives.

The International Council of Tanners, the Leather and Hide Council of America and Leather Naturally published a joint manifesto ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow (October 31 to November 12). In the manifesto, the leather industry bodies issue a call for COP26 to recognise four key points.

It should acknowledge “the cyclical, climate-efficient nature of natural fibres and the potential these materials have for helping to reduce the climate impacts of consumer products”. COP26 should also encourage the use of natural materials wherever feasible and reduce unnecessary reliance on fossil-fuel-based alternatives.

In addition, the conference should give support to lifecycle assessment (LCA) methodologies that “accurately account for the environmental impact of fossil-fuel based materials, including end-of-life properties”. Finally, the manifesto calls on COP26 to promote long-lasting products that can be used many times, repaired and refurbished, and last for years.

Leather fulfils all of these criteria perfectly, as the nearly 70 in-depth features World Leather has published in its Leather and the Circular Economy section in the last two years make abundantly clear.

United front

The signatories of the manifesto have called on leather industry organisations around the world to endorse their call to arms and have said they hope bodies representing other natural materials will add their voices as well.

They asked organisations such as national leather industry associations to communicate support of the manifesto to the COP26 delegations that their governments are sending to Glasgow, to politicians taking part in the conference, to media outlets covering the event, to other individuals or organisations that have a voice in “the debate on a circular and responsible society”, and on social media. They envisage an intense, industry-wide communication effort over the course of COP26 and the weeks that follow.

For all natural materials to present a united front would add weight to the message. A world that favours natural, renewable, recyclable, repairable, biodegradable materials that have a sustainability track-record spanning millennia, is possible. No complex inventions, intellectual property wars, patent lawyers or greenwashing campaigns are necessary. Natural materials are all around us and we already have the knowledge and technology required to turn them into clothes, shoes, accessories, furniture and car interiors. But Big Synthetic has deep pockets, a loud mouth and boundless enthusiasm for campaigns to convince brands and consumers that fibres from fossil fuels are, somehow (if you ignore inconvenient details such as greenhouse gas emissions and ocean plastic pollution), better for the planet.

Everything we consume has an environmental impact, of course, but consumer choices do not all have the same impact. Non-profit organisation The Woolmark Company works with Australia’s 60,000 woolgrowers to certify Australian wool, championing the fibre’s eco-credentials. As befits an Australian organisation, it rarely holds back when it has something to say. In the weeks leading up to COP26 The Woolmark Company has urged shoppers to “say no to fossil-fuel fashion” in a new guide to “conscious consumption”. The organisers of COP26 have made it clear that a major objective will be to use the summit to “secure global net-zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees in reach”. This is a reference to the Paris Agreement, reached at COP21 in 2015, which sets a goal of limiting global warming to below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels.

One-way ticket to landfill

The Woolmark Company wades right into this, saying: “Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic’s lifecycle threaten the ability to keep [to] 1.5 degrees, and with more than 65 million tonnes of plastic produced for textile fibres each year, there’s a high chance it’s clogging your wardrobe.” It goes on to say that people should, instead, choose natural fibres “that don’t cost the earth”, and that a fibre that grows on an animal’s back can only ever be described as “100% natural and renewable”. It refers to these as fibres that have “a positive lifecycle” because it’s easier to save them from landfill and incineration by putting them to use in a new product and integrating them into the circular economy. And it adds: “A   T-shirt made from recycled plastic water bottles may sound like the sustainable choice, but it actually prevents [the fibres] from being continually recycled into more water bottles, and so the T-shirt is a one-way ticket to landfill.”

COP26 and leather

Determination in the leather industry to play a part at COP26 began long before the October manifesto. The host city’s chamber of commerce launched an initiative called Circular Glasgow in 2018, which describes itself as “a growing network of businesses embracing the circular opportunity”. Scottish Leather Group (SLG) is a leading participant and Circular Glasgow has described SLG as being “transformational in its sector” owing to its success in reducing the average carbon intensity of its leather from 10.9 kilos of CO2-equivalent per hide in 2003 to 1.1 kilos in 2020. It achieved this 90% reduction through a series of measures that include switching to 100% renewable electricity and developing its own waste-to-energy plant.

Speaking about these initiatives, SLG’s head of innovation and sustainability,  Dr Warren Bowden, says that it was a “desire to close the circularity gap” that drove the group on. It has ceased to think and work in a linear way and instead considers waste to be a resource. “Circularity is about converting what someone else doesn’t want and making something from it,” he says. “There is a finite amount of resource on the planet. We as a society, including us in the leather sector, have to look at the resources we have and use them, and use circular thinking to keep those resources alive, reusing them, recovering them and remanufacturing them.”

In a new light

Dr Bowden has spoken in the past about experiencing “an industrial epiphany” around circularity and, in keeping with the nature of epiphanies, this made him see things in a new light. “The way the leather industry was working at the time was in a linear manufacturing system that was not a sustainable way forward,” he explains. “We had to start considering waste as a resource, and not just hides coming from the meat sector, but the waste coming out of our own production processes, too. Historically, that waste would have gone into the ground rather than into productive usage. We realised we had to change that because it wasn’t a future-proof way of manufacturing. What that produced was circularity in leather manufacturing. We are able to take back those by-products and use them to produce oils, proteins for food production or other novel products.”

Lowest of the low

Its 2020 figure of average carbon intensity of 1.1 kilos of CO2-equivalent per hide is the result of analysis  SLG carried out to meet a requirement called Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR). The UK government brought this into effect in 2019 to oblige manufacturing companies to disclose information about energy use and carbon emissions. It includes scope-one and scope-two emissions, the first covering all direct greenhouse gas emissions from the company’s own operations and the second the greenhouse gas emissions generated in producing the electricity the company consumes.

For many years, SLG has presented its offering as low-carbon leather, but the improvements it has achieved in recent years and its commitment to circularity have led it to adopt a new strapline proclaiming its range to be the world’s ‘lowest-carbon leather’. Dr Bowden says: “It’s the right time now to present our leather in this way, simply because of our supply chain, because we source hides responsibly, because of our own circular manufacturing process and what we do with the material. It’s long been the case that we’ve been quite reserved in presenting our low-carbon offering. What we’re saying now is that we are able to produce the lowest-carbon leather on the planet.”

This leadership helped earn SLG the opportunity to take part in COP26 and drive home the messages in the manifesto and present its own circular story so far. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is hosting an event  it calls ‘Climate Chamber Mission’ over two days during the summit. This will be an international trade and knowledge exchange that will take place at the start of COP26. One of the sessions will have the title ‘The role of sustainability and circular economy in international trade’ and one of the speakers will be Warren Bowden. 

Share this story: