SLG announces six commitments as part of new sustainability initiative
Scottish Leather Group (SLG) has launched a new group-wide sustainability initiative, calling it Sustainable by Nature. It said this new initiative was its commitment to ensuring that its impact on the environment, society and economy was “always at the forefront of our decision-making”.
The group, which runs tanneries in Paisley, Bridge of Weir and Glasgow, said it would use the new platform to collect all of its sustainability achievements and commitments in one place so that it can share them, build on them, and use them to guide plans for the future.
“Sustainable manufacturing is not a set of limitations, but an opportunity,” SLG said. “Innovation is essential to move ever closer to our goal: a zero-impact sustainable manufacturing platform for leather. Leather is naturally sustainable and so is our business.”
On launching the initiative, it announced six major commitments “to inspire sustainability and guarantee our future as industry leaders”.
Before the end of this year, SLG will make all of its suppliers signatories to its own code of conduct. Before the end of next year, it will be accredited to, and exceed the requirements of, Healthy Working Lives, a standard for employee wellbeing set up by the health authorities in Scotland.
By 2022, SLG has committed to earning accreditation to the UN Global Compact, which encourages company leaders to meet universal sustainability principles, and by 2023, it said it would verify “the integrity of our supply chain” to meet internationally accepted standards.
Commitment number five is that, by 2025, SLG will send none of its process waste to landfill but will find ways to use it all through circular manufacturing. Finally, also by 2025, the group will reduce its direct impacts to become carbon neutral.
It explained that, by making the volume of high-value, luxury leather it produces from hides from the beef and dairy industries, it was saving 100 tonnes of waste per day from those sectors from going to landfill.
“We make the lowest carbon-intensity leather in the world by sourcing raw hides locally, recovering energy from our waste, reducing waste to landfill, using only renewable energy, and by finding value in other industries for our by-products,” it said.
