World Leather presents ethicaleather to brands
16/08/2018
An elite group of tanners has been receiving information about ethicaleather for some time, but Mr Yarwood used the occasion of a seminar called Positive Voices for Leather, hosted by the North West Materials Show in Portland, as the platform to introduce the idea to brands.
Ethicaleather is a brand name for leather produced in the most socially and environmentally responsible way possible, meeting all the requirements of brands’ own and third parties’ certification and audit programmes. Its main aim is to use a levy system, similar to those in place in the cotton and wool industries, to raise a substantial annual budget, which it will use to promote ethicaleather to brands, retailers and consumers.
He pointed out that poorly resourced and disparate attempts by individuals and companies in the leather sector to promote the material have left a communications void, which campaign groups are only too ready to fill, often with misleading and untruthful claims.
“We have been working on this idea for a number of years,” Mr Yarwood said, “but we are presenting it formally to brands, to the buyers of leather, for the first time today. Ethicaleather is mostly about money. Its objective is to amass and spend a multi-million dollar budget and to follow the fine examples presented to us by cotton and wool.”
Under the programme, elite tanners who embrace all the requirements of ethicaleather, such as openness, transparency, high levels of social and environmental responsibility, and a commitment to partnership and innovation, will earn the right to sell their leather under the ethicaleather brand. The programme’s communications initiatives will present and promote ethicaleather to brands, retailers and consumers.
In Portland, Simon Yarwood said high-achieving tanners around the world will continue to live and work by these principles, but will now start to earn the recognition and reward they deserve.
To the brands at the seminar, he said: “You have to help the leather industry fill the communications void. Specify ethicaleather. Pay an ethical price for it. Celebrate with your customers the care you have taken over sourcing your leather. Speak up for this industry. Help it to build on its five millennia of history and to steer its way to a prosperous future.”
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