Denmark CO2 Tax May Have No Impact on Industry, but Cyclical Nature of Leather Was Ignored

The intrinsic recycling nature of leather has been ignored. Says Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano, Secretary General of COTANCE: “We believe that recovering hides and skins from slaughter animals and transforming them to leather is a recycling operation. I don't know how the Danish law works, but if it penalises this circular process, it will create more problems than anything else. If hides are not tanned to leather, they will rot and produce greenhouse gas. Leather stores carbon efficiently and durably. If responsibly produced, leather is the most sustainable choice for fashion and lifestyle.”

There is also a need to look at the ecosystem. Politicians, according to Redwood, appear determined to use the GWP100 calculation for methane when for livestock it is accepted that GWP gives a higher initial figure but a fairer long-term one. “We are also learning that separating arable and livestock in farming in the 1940s and 50s was a big error. Using chemistry to replace what the mixed farm obtained through rotational grazing and crops gave us nitrogen and potassium additions that ignored life below the soil. It decimated biodiversity because as the soil got poorer the crops needed not only more fertiliser but also weed killers and pesticides, all with excess running off into streams and rivers.”

He continues: “The world is desperately short of grasslands and most of what is, is in poor shape. Areas like Brazil have already seen research that shows more, controlled, cattle grazing is vital to improve them and since the grass has long roots, it sequesters more carbon than the grass in Europe. Planting trees is not the one-size-fits-all solution that was once thought. Wildfires are increasing and decimating huge areas. Often the wrong type of trees are planted and do little good, and carbon payment schemes involving trees are full of cheating holes. So, increasingly we are told that long term grassland is often better than planting trees.

“Yet, some 500 years ago, the US had up to 100 million buffalos, far more than it has cattle today. They stayed in tight herds, ate half the grass and greenery, trampled the rest pushing the carbon down to the roots, and then moved on. This left their excrement to fertilise the land and things grew rapidly after they left—a perfect system now being copied worldwide as 'mob or adaptive’ grazing. And long-term grassland is exceptionally resilient to both floods and drought—the big new indicators of rising temperatures.

Senior talks about “turning hides into leather avoids the climate impact of their disposal and this could and should be considered as a credit to the whole system. It might be that value of leather manufacturing in mitigating the climate impact of livestock rearing starts to be properly recognised.”

Adds Dr Luis A. Zugno, Executive Secretary of the International Union of Leather Technologists and Chemists Societies (IULTCS), “Animals are raised for meat and the hides and skins as a byproduct represent less than 3% of the value of the animal. With the carbon tax, the hides and skin prices will increase. This will affect primarily the cow hides as most of the pig skins are used for food. On the other hand, this carbon tax on livestock can be seen as a competitive advantage for the meat and hides as cow producers will have a greater incentive to reduce emissions, and therefore they will be producing meat and hides with lower emissions. Maybe this can be a good thing for the leather industry.”

Redwood hits on a term now pretty much in vogue. “What is called regenerative farming—hard to precisely define as it involves correcting degeneration which is different from place to place—involves reintegration of livestock with crops as part of the process of recovering soil quality and lost biodiversity.

“With climate change advancing a bit faster than expected livestock will be difficult, if not impossible to keep in many currently important regions. Northern Europe will be one place where people and livestock can live comfortably, together.  In general, Europe is a good place for grass grazed livestock and the emissions are nowhere near those suggested in the various announcements related to this legislation.

“It does not make scientific sense and will not help the environmental, human health or farming livelihoods; and takes impetus from needed research. Perhaps the legislators are motivated by ideology rather than fact, which in the face of the challenges we face in the world is a mistaken route; collaboration, cooperation and sometimes compromise are better approaches.”