Charity urges Australia to make cane toad leather
An Australian charity which is raising funds by manufacturing shoes using leather made from cane toads has said it is a “huge missed opportunity” that it cannot buy cane toad leather in Australia.
The Ted Noffs Foundation, a youth-at-risk charity, started producing the handmade sneakers to raise money for its Sydney drop-in centre. Foundation representative Matt Noffs said that cane toad leather seemed the most ecologically sustainable material available.
“We were looking at using materials that were going to be more biodegradable and so we started looking at things which were better for the environment,” said Mr Noffs.
“And then someone said you can actually get cane toad, and I thought, well, that would be really interesting.”
The charity says its leather supplier is buying the cane toad skins in Indonesia because there is no processing factory in Australia.
"I believe that a lot of them actually come from Indonesia," said Mr Noffs. “There's no processing plant in Australia. And so as soon as we heard that – we only discovered that recently – we set up meetings to go and meet with MPs from around the country. We started in Queensland where there's obviously an issue."
