Circular economy focus for Dietrich Tegtmeyer talk in Shanghai
03/09/2019
A seasoned speaker and industry representative, Dr Tegtmeyer works for leather chemicals manufacturer Lanxess as an advocate for sustainable leather.
At the talk in Shanghai he offered a detailed explanation of current climate challenges facing the global community and then went on to talk about the importance of vastly improving our resource management as one of the ways of addressing these challenges.
He said: “The most important thing is to close the loop in our materials management. This is the only way we can push back Earth Overshoot Day.” He explained that Earth Overshoot Day, the calendar date on which humanity’s consumption of resources overshoots the earth’s ability to regenerate those resources in a year, occurred in December in 1973. In 2019, however, it was July 29.
Dr Tegtmeyer said a commitment to a circular economy means reusing materials in consumer goods as many times as possible and he insisted that leather can be an excellent example of this, which he demonstrated by pointing out that we can repair leather shoes and keep using them and that airline seats upholstered with leather can last for 12 years, while those covered with artificial material have to be shredded and replaced after only 11 months.
When products do come to the end of their useful lives, the possibilities for recycling leather are also part of its “huge advantage”, he continued, adding: “Designers are very interested in using recycled materials and this will become a mega-trend in the future. This is a good thing. Even when we cannot reuse or recycle leather any more, it still does not need to go to waste. There is a third possibility: leather is collagen, it’s a raw material and we can put it back into a renewable raw materials flow. For example, we can use shavings as fertiliser to feed the growth of new plants, then new animals, and then it can feed the technical materials flow again.”
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