Ford gifts leftover leather to social enterprises
Two social enterprises in Detroit are the beneficiaries of a donation of 250 tanned hides from automotive group Ford. They will use the leather to make a wide variety of products.
Ford is in the process of moving its product development centre in Dearborn to a new location and, as part of the move, storage spaces at the centre are being demolished. In one, workers found the leather, left over from projects to build prototype vehicles.
In comments to local media, Jim Conner, a process director in the design team at Ford, said the company had known the material was there. What he didn’t know until it came to light during the move was that the hides were of “super-high quality”.
Mr Conner explained that the volume was too small to make shipping it to cutting plants for use in current Ford projects. He wanted to find a home for the leather in the local area and hoped that the donation could make an impact socially.
Two local enterprises will use them. One is Pingree Detroit, which has a policy of giving work making footwear and accessories to veterans of the US armed forces. The other is Mend On The Move, a non-profit organisation that uses materials salvaged from the automotive industry to make jewellery, putting the work in the hands of abuse survivors.
Mend On The Move’s founder, Joanne Ewald, told the Detroit Free Press that she was just starting to dream of all the possibilities that having a large quantity of high-quality leather would mean.
