Industry body COTANCE organised an event at EU Green Week 2025 to present to an influential audience leather’s credentials for earning recognition as the circular economy’s dream product.

This year, the series of events that make up the European Union’s Green Week included a detailed contribution from the leather industry. Shining a spotlight on leather’s claims for recognition as an integral component of the circular economy, in Europe and globally, was the principal objective.

Green Week brings together stakeholders and policy makers to discuss environmental policy and to celebrate initiatives and ideas that can make EU economies amore sustainable. At EU Green Week 2025 in June, the European Commissioner for the environment, Jessika Roswall, said she wanted to make the circular economy front and centre of this year’s discussions. The event’s theme for 2025 was ‘Circular solutions for a competitive EU’. She said: “We want to zoom out and talk about the systemic change we need to make the circular economy a reality on the ground, and how to drive that change. We need a change of mindset. Not only among consumers, but among businesses as well.”

She went on to ask an interesting question, saying: “If circularity is such a no-brainer, then why is it not yet the dominant model?” In a partner event that it organised as a contribution to EU Green Week 2025, the leather industry’s main representative body in Europe, COTANCE put forward a series of arguments to show that circularity is the dominant model in this sector. As World Leather has argued since 2020, and demonstrated in a collection of detailed articles (the running total is 185), circularity is inherent to the manufacture of leather.

Wider audience

COTANCE president, Manuel Ríos, opened the partner event by saying participation in the broader EU Green Week programme gave the leather industry an opportunity “to talk with a wider audience” about the progress the sector has made in pursuing the objectives of the European Green Deal. This far-reaching programme of policies aims to make the EU climate-neutral by 2050 and to end economic growth’s dependence on using up finite resources. 

“This year’s theme is particularly dear to our industry,” Mr Ríos continued, “because circularity is in the leather industry’s DNA. Customers, consumers and regulators are all showing interest in understanding leather and its contribution to a competitive circular economy in Europe. The 30,000 people producing leather in Europe’s 1,500 tanneries generate between €5 billion and €6 billion each year. With a share of 12% of all the leather produced in the world, Europe’s tanners generate between 25% and 30% of the global industry’s total turnover. The most exclusive designers, the highest-quality consumer products and the most demanding technical applications use European leather.”

Perfect for the circular economy

The COTANCE president went on to say that he believes most people fail to realise that the European tanning industry plays a key role as “a recycling sector”. The hides and skins of animals become available as part of the food production industry. “Without tanners, these hides and skins would end up becoming waste,” Mr Ríos said. “Instead, tanners transform them into the beautiful and durable fashion and lifestyle material that we all love. Leather reduces the generation of waste and avoids the greenhouse gases that the rotting of this organic material would create. And at the end of its lifecycle, leather does not end up in floating islands of waste in the world’s oceans, as other materials do. It simply disintegrates in nature’s biomass.” His conclusion was that leather is the perfect material for the circular economy.

Secretary-general of COTANCE, Gustavo González-Quijano, picked up on this idea. He told the Green Week gathering that leather is such a good match for the circular economy because the raw material it uses is renewable. It is raw material he describes as “leftovers from the meat sector”. In turn, the leather industry’s own leftovers are transferred  into “other outputs”. These include gelatine and collagen for the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors. Material for fertilisers for the agricultural sector also comes from leather production, as do stiffener materials for footwear and leathergoods.

“Leather is also circular because it has a long lifetime,” Mr González-Quijano said. “It is a durable material, plus repair and refurbishment are possible during its lifetime. Then, at the end of its serviceable life, it biodegrades, and does so more quickly than other materials.”

Wealth or waste

In achieving all of this, the leather industry has found a way of creating wealth from waste, one that has endured for millennia. Tanners have found what the COTANCE secretary-general called “a sustainable, valuable and profitable valorisation route” for material that would otherwise go to waste. “At a global level, tanneries recover around 8 million tonnes of raw hides and skins from the food sector every year,” he continued.

Then he reiterated a powerful message that the Leather and Hide Council of America made public late last year. Around 40% of all cattle hides, globally, fail to make it into the leather supply chain. “This is an estimation,” Gustavo González-Quijano pointed out, “but our American colleagues have calculated that 134 million hides are going to waste every year. I remember that, around 30 years ago, statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation suggested that the leather industry was recovering and transforming 90% of hides. We have fallen from 90% to 60% now. This is a shame. It is also a risk for society. Hides are biological materials and if they are not treated they can disseminate pathogens of animal origin into the environment. Another factor is that rotting hides and skins also release greenhouse gases. The 134 million hides we talked about will produce more than 40 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent as they break down in nature. This is a very important impact.”

On home soil

One of the difficulties that COTANCE pointed to in its Green Week partner event is that it is witnessing a progressive decrease in the uptake of hides and skins. Mr González-Quijano said the €5 billion or €6 billion that leather manufacturing in Europe turns over annually, at the moment, is down by 40% compared to pre-covid figures. He also talked about “regulatory failures” and even “the stigmatisation of hides and skins”. These are threatening to make matters worse. Burdens such as those the European Union Deforestation Regulation seeks to impose present a real risk, in his opinion.

“We face the risk that the industry could relocate to other countries,” the COTANCE secretary-general said. “If that happens, the sector will lose a champion of the global leather industry. Europe is that champion.”

He called on policy makers to move regulation in a different direction and to help the industry in the European Union survive, flourish and make leather the “successful, circular product” it deserves to be.

Legislators need to lend a hand

“The first need that we have is to have leather’s identity protected in legislation,” Mr González-Quijano said. “We see that there is now the opportunity to have authenticity fully included in EU textile labelling regulations. But we would also like to see a distinction there between leather products and products made from other materials.”

The second area in which he called for help from legislators was in “environmental metrics”. For example, with regard to allocation of carbon footprint, he said he could not understand how legislators and regulators can fail to make a distinction between determining products, in this case meat and milk, and by-products such as hides and skins. “If you put a steak and a hide in front of people, none of them would be in doubt about identifying immediately which of them was the main product,” he added.

He also suggested that proposed regulations around product durability need great improvement. These proposals set duration-of-service values that are far too long for fast-fashion products and far too short for quality products made from leather.

Finally, he said it was important that the industry receive support for developing the skills and qualification that it needs for “a successful transition to the green, digital and circular economy.”

Leather is a result of the recycling of “a slaughterhouse leftover”, he said in conclusion. It is a valuable, durable material, designed to last, to be repairable and biodegradable at end of life. “Leather is, therefore, the perfect circular-economy product,” he said.

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