UK Leather Federation offers definitive figures in response to NGO report
15/05/2015
Entitled ‘Mind Your Step’, the report sets out to highlight the environmental impact of seven consumer products, one of which is a pair of leather boots. Focusing specifically on the amount of land and the volume of water required to generate raw materials and make the finished product, it claims that the boots, made from an estimated 0.46 square-metres of leather from Brazil, would have a footprint of 50 square-metres of land and of 14,500 litres of water.
According to calculations from the UK Leather Federation, a calculation for land use of the lower figure of 45 square-metres would be more accurate in terms of cattle distribution, but in a statement submitted to World Leather, the organisation said the Friends of the Earth figure “lacks context”. In the statement, director of the UK Leather Federation, Dr Kerry Senior, added: “The land isn’t being used to support the leather industry, but to rear cattle for meat. The hide remains a by-product.”
The figure Mind Your Step gives for water, 14,500 litres to produce 0.46 square-metres of leather, is grossly inaccurate. Dr Senior told World Leather that a figure of 59.8 litres would be in keeping with what the leather industry accepts as an average in the European Union, although he pointed out that many tanneries operate at much higher levels of efficiency in water use, some achieving figures that are half the average.
In the statement, he said Friends of the Earth’s figure is “ridiculous” and explained that the vast majority of the 14,500 litres the campaign has included in its calculation is green water, that is water from rain or snow. “This is available only to plants,” Dr Senior said, “would not recharge aquifers or rivers and will fall regardless of what is happening in the field it falls on. Adding this to the calculation is a way of pumping up the number.” He also said it is worth noting that green water will not be included in the calculation the European Commission has agreed to use to work out the environmental footprint of leather in its ongoing ‘green product’ project.
Dr Senior went on to say that, if anything, Mind Your Step may underestimate the amount of blue water (from freshwater sources) used in production in the tannery. The report puts this at just over 20 litres for the 0.46 square-metres of leather required to make the boots, whereas the UK Leather Federation director said all of his calculation of 59.8 litres would refer to the blue water tanneries have to consume.
In addition, he said the report’s insistence on including higher numbers for leather produced in tanneries that do not treat wastewater effectively (acknowledging that it cannot level this cricticism at the Brazilian leather in its own study) was “misleading”. He also took exception to statements in Mind Your Step that claim leather production is “a determining factor” in beef farming and the allegation that chromium III is toxic.
“Leather is by-product of a renewable resource that is in demand by 90% of the global population,” he concluded, “and tanneries are bound by environmental legislation the same as any other industry in any given region.”
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