Italy: committed to circularity
Italy’s national tanning industry association, UNIC, recently published its sustainability report for 2021. As it did in 2020, UNIC devotes an entire section of the new report to the commitment of Italian leather manufacturers to circularity and environmental responsibility.
It is clear from its 2021 sustainability report that the Italian national tanning industry association, UNIC, was already putting the difficulties presented by the covid-19 pandemic behind it by the end of last year and was looking ahead to a sustainable, circular future for the industry.
UNIC publishes a sustainability report in late spring each year. It is perhaps inevitable that these reports should have a lag in some of the statistics they quote. In this case, the 2021 sustainability report makes many references to the industry’s performance in 2020, which, especially in terms of economic results, was gravely affected by the pandemic. However, the forward-looking ideas and strategy it highlights are from 2021. The challenges presented by covid were still in evidence at that time, but optimism, buoyed by the success of vaccination programmes and the emergence of well funded recovery plans, was on the way back.
Signs of the times
UNIC frames the circularity section of the new report in this context. It celebrates being one of more than 30 signatories of the Leather Manifesto that industry bodies from across the world presented in the build-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November. UNIC says it was happy to be a promoter of a document that drew attention to the important role of natural materials in the fight against climate change.
The organisation was also happy to support the work of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) coalition, founded by Charles, Prince of Wales. In 2021, the prince published a document he called Terra Carta, a charter to put the earth at the heart of business. The document provides a roadmap to 2030 for businesses to move towards a sustainable future. UNIC is a signatory to Terra Carta too.
Ups and downs
The main indicators in the 2021 report are that Italian tanners have reached an energy consumption level of 0.9 tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) to produce 1,000 square-metres of finished leather, a fall of more than 8% compared to the figure in the previous year’s sustainability report. There were slight increases in chemicals and water consumption. The new report gives an average consumption of 2.06 kilos of chemicals to make one square-metre of finished leather in Italy, up by 3.1% on the previous year . For water, the new figure is 113 litres per square-metre, up by 3.2%.
Over a longer period of time, compared to figures for 2003, UNIC said consumption of energy had come down by 30%, water by 18% and chemicals by 9%.
Still on the subject of energy, the 2021 report points out that more than 10% of the energy that Italian tanners consume comes from renewable resources but that, for electricity, renewable energy’s share is more than 70%.
Return to nature
Apart from hides, UNIC says, the essential raw material for the leather manufacturing process is water. It points out, however, that the water its tanneries use in the wet phases of production has to have a high level of purity to allow the tanners to work their magic. Most of the water they source is from groundwater reserves and the practice of recycling and reusing water on site is not the norm. What the big tanning clusters in Tuscany and Veneto do have in place is advanced common wastewater treatment plants.
Tanners calculate that 4.8% of the water they use remains in the hide. Some evaporates, but all of the rest going into the treatment plants. Once there, this water is made clean enough to return to the natural environment, with the plants eliminating an average of 99.5% of chromium III, 99.4% of suspended solids, 97.8% of chemical oxygen demand and 96.4% of total nitrogen.
A solid favour
Solid waste from the tanning process also has a place in the circular economy. The report says leather manufacturing processes in Italy produced, on average, 1.46 kilos of solid waste per square-metre of finished leather, including sludge, fleshings, trimmings and shavings. UNIC has found that 97.6% of this waste is non-hazardous. The proportion that is hazardous is “mainly packaging residues from dangerous chemicals”, the report says. Much of the rest, more than 75% of the total, are by-products of animal origin and these have value. The organic material that comes from leather processing yields hydrolysates, substances that have potential applications in a wide sector of industries, including agriculture, food, construction, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
The report pays particular attention to the use of tanning waste in the agriculture sector, most typically as fertiliser. This exemplifies an “ideal closing of the natural materials loop”, UNIC says and can play a role in helping the European Commission fulfil its wider Green Deal programme, which includes its Circular Economy Action Plan and specific projects such as Farm To Fork. Launched in 2020, Farm To Fork aims to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and primary production while ensuring fair economic returns for farmers.
More broadly, UNIC points to the European Commission’s stated Green Deal aim of encouraging manufacturers and consumers to choose to make and buy products that have a long life and are, from the outset, upgradeable, repairable, reusable, recycled and recyclable. Leather, UNIC insists, has “all the required characteristics”.
UNIC’s 2021 sustainability report says Italian tanners have reduced energy consumption by 8% in the last year.
Credit: Gruppo Dani
