New issue of World Leather available online
The latest issue of World Leather is now available for subscribers to read online.
In this issue, we have a number of articles that touch on the same theme: traceability. The Nothing To Hide essay, an updated version of essay two in the series, covers animal welfare. It gives a detailed explanation of the thinking of one of the world’s great experts in welfare considerations for cattle farmers and meat companies, Dr Temple Grandin. Leather manufacturers feature in the essay too. For them, offering a guarantee of good treatment of the animals that their products come from is a question of traceability. The leather industry is getting better at this all the time.
Traceability is also at the core of one of the six articles in our Leather and the Circular Economy section this time. It highlights a special partnership between Danish companies, Spoor (a supplier of traceable hides) and Roccamore (a footwear brand). Spoor’s laser technology-based system makes detailed information about its hides available to consumers who buy the boots from a special Roccamore capsule collection that uses leather made from those Spoor hides. Roccamore’s founder, Frederikke Antonie Schmidt, insists that total transparency is the only future the fashion world has.
Our Leather Leaders series this time is with influential sustainability consultant Federico Brugnoli. He says he would like to see the leather industry move away from backward-looking lifecycle assessment of what it has already produced. Instead, it should adopt forward-looking “lifecycle thinking”, he says, and design sustainability in from the start.
Technology-wise, we offer a full report on the recent COTANCE-FILK attempt to analyse some of the newer materials that present themselves as alternatives to leather. We name the materials and the tests FILK carried out, and we show you the scores.
World Leather: it’s for everyone who thinks deeply about the global leather industry.
