Leather industry hits back
Seven years after launching the Nothing To Hide essays explaining why people make and use leather and how the industry works, World Leather is now updating the series.
In 2014, World Leather launched a series of essays under the title Nothing to Hide. It ran for several years, with the material appearing in the magazine and then becoming available free of charge on a dedicated website.
The essays, 15 in total, are still available under an open-source agreement, for journalists, universities, companies and consumers all over the world to use. Starting in early 2021, World Leather will begin updating the essays.
Nothing to Hide essays explain the science, technology and ecology that underpin the modern leather industry. All contributors are respected authorities in industry and academia. Since the launch of the series, industry bodies and research institutions across the globe have cited the Nothing To Hide essays frequently in their work.
This is a world in which nothing can be hidden, so organisations that want to prosper have to make sure they have nothing to hide. The phrase comes from Greg Page, the retired chief executive of Cargill, in a speech about the company’s main area of business, producing and marketing food. It can just as easily apply to the leather industry.
Incorrect and obsolete information about the leather industry continues to be broadcast on television and radio, and published in newspapers, magazines and reports. Campaign groups, often with anti-leather agendas, have used this negative material to further damage perceptions of the leather industry. The Nothing to Hide collection is designed to combat this head-on by sharing accurate, up-to-date, easy-to-access information and explanations of how and why tanners and their upstream suppliers work the way they do. The best in the industry have nothing to hide; they have much to be proud of, as this series proves.
Nothing to Hide will continue to serve as a reservoir of facts and knowledge that the entire global leather industry will be able to draw on when the need arises to respond objectively to criticism and to increase consumers’ awareness of the beauty, renewability, value and circularity of leather.
