COTANCE call for support explained
19/07/2013
Last year, Italian industry consultant Federico Brugnoli presented an argument that the carbon footprint for leather production should begin at the slaughterhouse and end at the tannery gate when the leather is shipped. The effect of this would be to exclude any of the agricultural footprint involved in animal rearing from attaching to the hide or skin in most situations.
In the real world, tanners have found themselves pressed by large customers to apportion a percentage of the carbon footprint from raising the animal to the finished leather. Some brands, notably Puma, have even used this argument to justify using non-leather materials in the uppers of some of its shoes. The Brugnoli argument is that this is unfair because the raw material tanners use is a by-product of the meat industry. He bases this on an academic study dating from 1999 that holds that in the case of co-products and by-products arising from renewable materials, the carbon footprint should be allocated to the “determining product”, the product for which demand determines the amount of production, which in the case of almost all hides and skins is meat.
In September 2012, the Global Leather Co-ordinating Committee (GLCC), formed by the three global industry bodies, the International Council of Tanners (ICT), International Council of Hide Skin & Leather Traders Associations (ICHSLTA) and International Union of Leather Technologists and Chemists Societies (IULTCS), held its fifth meeting in Shanghai and warmly endorsed Mr Brugnoli’s position.
Because the leather industry is not alone in holding internal discussions about how to calculate its environmental impact, the European Commission has invited stakeholders in a number of sectors to help it develop agreed methods for measuring environmental performance. COTANCE identified this as a good way for the global leather industry to achieve agreement on a disputed issue. However, general secretary, Gustavo González-Quijano, has explained that the approval of COTANCE members, the leather and tanning industry bodies in various EU countries, would be necessary before pressing ahead.
This internal approval came at the COTANCE annual general meeting in Venice at the end of June, but this left only a little time to put together the documents that the European Commission has decided all industries interested in taking part in the pilot initiative have to submit. The Commission has given July 26 as the deadline.
The European Commission supports green products and green industries, but has said it wants consumers to have confidence that products claiming to be green really do have a low impact on the environment. This requires improved methods for measuring how much of an impact products have.
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