Kering places too high an environmental burden on leather
06/05/2016
The new report, ‘Beyond our Limits’, says that Kering has devoted considerable time and effort over the last four years to increasing the traceability and sustainability of its leather supply chains and is 91% of the way towards meeting the 2012 target, at least as far as “luxury bovine leather” is concerned.
It goes on to give specific examples of fine work a number of its brands, including Puma, Gucci and Bottega Veneta, have done in this area. Another laudable aspect of this project is that Kering has said it will share details of the work it has done across the luxury industry in an effort “to catalyse industry improvement and greater awareness around environmental impacts”.
Speaking at the time of the launch of the new report, Kering’s chief sustainability officer, Marie-Claire Daveu (pictured), said the transparency and traceability of her company’s bovine leather supply chain have certainly increased, and she pointed out that having most of its bovine leather produced in the European Union had helped it achieve a lower environmental impact.
The group has said it intends to set itself new targets and that it will communicate these at the end of 2016 or early next year.
Of more concern is a statement in the report, which also looks at Kering’s performance in making its use of gold, diamonds, fur, synthetics and other raw materials, that leather represents 24% of its overall environmental impact. Kering encompasses 20 different brands and distributes its products in 120 countries around the world. It employs 38,000 people around the globe.
There is an explanation as to why it attributes almost one-quarter of its entire environmental impact to leather in ‘Beyond our Limits’. Kering has decided to consider leather as a co-product rather than a by-product of the meat industry. Furthermore, it makes it clear that its focus here has been far more on cattle farms than on tanneries. “The focus of our target has been entirely upstream in the supply chain,” the report says, “primarily on livestock production.”
It acknowledges that there is “an ongoing debate” about how much of the environmental impact of the beef industry and cattle rearing can fairly be attributed to leather. It says: “Kering follows the principle that that, based on the market value of beef and its various co-products, one can attribute 8%-10% of the impacts of beef production to leather.”
This flies in the face of work that COTANCE, the leather industry’s representative body in the European Union, has been diligently carrying out as part of a wider European Commission exercise to measure the environmental performance of consumer products. Even those who disagree with the idea that the tanning industry’s environmental impact should only begin when hides leave abattoirs must accept that not all of the hides in the leather value chain come from beef cattle and a huge proportion of the environmental impact of dairy cattle, on average 88%, is the responsibility of the dairy rather than the meat industry. This means a figure of 8%-10% across the board is too high.
Image credit: Kering
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