Honorary doctorate for leading industry figure
The founder and director of Milan-based consultancy Spin360, Federico Brugnoli, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Northampton. The university said it had made the award in recognition of Dr Brugnoli’s entrepreneurship and commitment to innovation in making the global leather industry more sustainable.
Spin 360 works to help companies develop new, sustainable business models. Its notable successes in the leather industry include working with tanning group PrimeAsia on a lifecycle assessment (LCA) of its leather production, helping chemicals groups Stahl to certify its LCA data systems, and joining forces late last year with multi-stakeholder organisation the Leather Working Group (LWG) to launch “the largest lifecycle assessment (LCA) for the leather industry” to date.
Federico Brugnoli also played a critical role in helping the leather industry in Europe put together rules for calculating the environmental footprint of leather and winning official approval for these from the European Commission. He is active in the field of education and is currently scientific director of a Master’s course in fashion sustainability at the Accademia Costume Moda in Rome.
In an interview with World Leather last year, Dr Brugnoli said there were many different approaches to LCA and insisted the leather industry should instead focus on “lifecycle thinking”, which would mean designing sustainability in from the start.
