Footwear professionals hear about leather’s long history of sustainability
06/09/2017
In her presentation, Dr Lama informed an audience made up of footwear executives that efforts to make leather production more safe and sustainable have been going on for longer than most people realise. For example, she said the industry identified issues with hexavalent chromium as long ago as the early 1900s and introduced ideas to improve in the following decades, most notably by ending the practice of double chrome baths.
Her research also shows that pressure that pressure groups demanding action and improvement are far from a new phenomenon and that campaigns to encourage tanners to improve their management of wastewater and sludge, for example, existed long before the end of the twentieth century.
Dr Lama pointed out that it was the twenty-first century before “definite guidelines” emerged for the first time and she argued that progress continues, suggesting that the industry will need to address in the years to come issues such as finding new ways to reuse leather when consumers have finished with the original finished product.
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