It ain't fashion, if it ain't sustainable

UNIC Concerie Italiane

EUDR Impact / State of Leather 2024 / IV

24 October 2024

7 minutes

In the past, cattle pasture mostly expanded into the savannahs or grasslands of southern Brazil, with low deforestation rates; however,the spread of cattle grazing northward drove large-scale deforestation. Factors favouring this development include (i) the extensive nature and (ii) low productivity of tropical grazing beef production.

Leather Has No Direct Deforestation Link, but Will Need to Work Hard on Traceability Systems

The problem of deforestation is extended to leather only by ‘proxy’. The entire industry—the world across—has just about a year in not only to put in place traceability systems that work and are cheap, but also to shed off the deforestation tag. texfash tries to unravel the threads.

Subir Ghosh

Commentary

Spotlight: State of Leather 2024

Material Science / Apple FineWoven

29 February 2024

7 minutes

Apple Inc had claimed that its new FineWoven material had significantly lower emissions compared to the more "carbon-intensive leather" but tests have proven otherwise.

iTrash: Apple's Vegan Alternative Crumbles to Pieces as Durability Goes for a 6-Month Toss

The Apple FineWoven material that was touted as a more environment-friendly alternative to leather has failed the elementary test of durability, apart from the fact that the tech giant's unqualified claims have been exposed by laboratory tests.

Subir Ghosh

Commentary

COP27 UPDATES / Leather Manifesto

10 November 2022

3 minutes

Every year, an estimated 120 million hides, equivalent to approximately 600 million square metres of leather, are thrown into landfill, creating nearly 15 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Leather Organisations Urge COP27 to Prioritise Natural Materials

A 'Leather Manifesto' has exhorted the COP27 to recognise the cyclical, climate-efficient characteristics of leather and other natural fibres. It also urged the COP27 to understand the implications of the huge amounts of raw material of leather production, hides and skins, that are currently being thrown away.