Leather needs to guard against its own greenwashing - leatherbiz: Lead Leatherbiz

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Leather needs to guard against its own greenwashing

14/06/2018
One of the biggest problems the leather industry has to contend with in its attempts to present itself as a viable and important part of the circular economy is the temptation to ‘greenwash’ its own story, according to Dr Warren Bowden, managing director of Scottish Leather Group Technology.

“We must be honest and transparent,” Dr Bowden said in a presentation at FILK’s recent Leather Days conference in Freiberg. “Greenwashing is one of our biggest enemies.There are bad practices in parts of the global leather industry and in the livestock industry, where we do have an influence, and we should have fixed that bad practice a long time ago. This is controversial, but I’m pleased animal rights groups have flagged some of these things up.”

He went on to say that one of the areas in which the leather industry can and should make improvements is in the traceability of hides. He said some automotive original equipment manufacturers are already asking for hide traceability from field to finished leather and that if the animal rights protest groups were providing tanners with a wake-up call over this, they were doing the industry a favour. “This isn’t something for the future,” he said. “This is happening now.”


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