Beast to Beauty a success
13/06/2013
Students from these colleges had funding to attend the conference from the Leathersellers Company in the City of London.
Speakers included Kevin Sefton, one of the co-founders of Glasgow-based handmade footwear brand Govan Originals, colour trends expert Laura Perryman and Rachel Garwood and Jane Mills from the University of Northampton who talked about the role of leather in design education at the university.
Later, James Lang, marketing director of the Scottish Leather Group gave a presentation on the work the group has done to reduce its carbon footprint, with the tannery waste-to-energy treatment plant at its Bridge of Weir facility one of the best examples.
Reg Hankey, the chief executive of Pittards, also spoke, focusing his presentation on recent efforts in the global industry to counteract misleading anti-leather campaigns.
The conference closed with a discussion involving Gustavo González Quijano, secretary general of COTANCE, and Dr Gerhard Wolf, the head of the leather technical competence centre at chemicals manufacturer BASF. Both participants agreed that there are valid arguments for attributing 0% of the upstream carbon emissions of cows, sheep and goats to leather’s carbon footprint. They expressed hope that the global industry might soon agree on a framework for calculating the carbon footprint of leather and, from there, be able to communicate its position to brands and consumers “with one voice”.
They accepted that tanners might face opposition to 0% from finished product brands, but said this did not mean that what they called a flawed methodology of allocating a share of carbon footprint to “non-determining” by-products of the meat industry was any more valid. Nevertheless, they suggested it ought to be possible for the global leather industry to agree to a compromise on 0% to make discussions between tanners and their customers a bit easier.
Beast to Beauty 2013 was jointly organised by leather training consultancy LeatherWise and World Leather magazine, with the support of Pittards, the Scottish Leather Group, the University of Northampton and the Leathersellers Company.
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