The myth of leather sustainability

Leather products are, in fact, promoting sustainability.

          The discussions on various topics of global warming, climate change as well as sustainability have been widely put on the table in countless meeting rooms in both government sections and private ones. As a massive amount of awareness regarding this particular topic has been implanting on a global population for over a decade, there’re new studies and researches that come out every day stating facts and assumptions on how some kind of industries have a slight to huge effect on contributing to global warming. Countless of time, global warming has generally been linked to sustainability in which many ways has been tied to eco-friendly or “Go-green” aspects which is quite understandable, since eco-friendly and Go-green concept heavily represents the promotion of providing balance and stability to the whole eco system as well as promoting enlargement of numbers of plants who hold a leading role in a whole ecosystem. All this facts that have been studied, researched and announced to the mass aren’t wrong, but, however, there are some misconceptions and unfair demonization on some type of industries, who all of the sudden, have been given a bad name, and in this case, in particularly, is the leather industry.

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       The inevitable connections between Go-green, sustainable, eco-friendly, nature loving or even veganism and climate change and global warming occur and have been portrayed to the eyes of public for years. The effect of this idea is also displayed gradually among related businesses. There is no argument that all the studies and researches are incorrect, but, as we all know, there will always be the bright side of the darkness and conversely bright side of the bright side of the dark one, like Yin and Yang.

        The leather industry is up there on the top of a list of business which is to blame regarding to this topic discussion. Frequently demonized by the media, leather business has always a bad image of being part of destroying our beautiful Earth. But, when one can stop listening to some one-sided biases for a little bit, open their hearts a little more as well as getting into logical discussion, it will be found that, in fact, leather products, DO massively contribute to sustainability, help reducing countless metric ton amount of waste as well as help saving lives of trees! Yes, it is true. These are not made-up facts; here are reasons and some aspects which may surprise you greatly.

            Firstly, leather products promote sustainability, the unknown facts that are hidden by media and so-called “Eco-friendly” and “Green” companies who are just willing to sell their products. The point about leather products promoting sustainability is that leather products last longer in term of product life and in a sense of fashion, they are classics, you can use them much more often for a longer period of time, and moreover, in the sense of utility, especially in the winter time in colder climate, they can perform a better task of heat protection because after all, they’re products of nature. A true product of nature since prehistoric era up until a very moment.

         Logically speaking, leather products are just by-products from one of the fastest growing industry in the world, meat industry. Imagine, world’s populations are increasing every day, food and meat consumptions are also shooting up sharply since meat consumption indicates wealth and abundance, people are consuming meat more and more every day, and to be honest, there is no promotion on meat consumption here, but realistically, we can’t stop and change people mind all of the sudden to stop eating meat, and since people still continue to consume more and more meat now, what will be left as a huge amount of waste? Certainly, all those hide! Isn’t it quite odd that we’ve all been told to reduce waste and recycle but in contrary we’ve also been told to demonized leather products?

            That leads to a second point, waste reduction, Instead of having to get rid of those wastes and cause more pollutions, cost and energy to do so, why not recycling them and reuse them again? Eurofins BLC stated that 93% value of the whole cow is meat; hide of that cow will hold the monetary value of 7%, so basically, if the cow costs $100, its hide would cost just $7 and if there is nobody offers to buy that hide, they will likely have to throw it away to waste. In fact, if you’ve had a chance to visit one of museums which exhibits life of our ancestors or human in the past, they’ve been using up almost every waste from a death of one cow, buffalo or horse as tools, medicines, oil, or clothing and apparels since as far as we can study back into the days, consequently, by using leather products, you can significantly help using up and leaving less waste to this precious world of ours.

            Last point of all, before believing in one-sided advertisement about using recycle synthetic fibers or bamboo fibers of being “greener” than using leather products, please reconsider the matter of production process, as from a survey from graduate student from NCSU and SKEMA , it is found that people focus almost solely on a consideration of materials used in manufacture rather than a production process itself, in other word, just looking at the materials of one particular products aren’t enough, the process of making that products may create harmful substance discharge or indirectly, unknowingly bothering the nature we wanted to protect in the first place, like chemical discharge coming out of manufacturing process or even natural resources we have to cut down more just for the sake of “Go-green” products isn’t that much better than leather products after all since leathers are also bio-degradable as well.

​          In summary, the point we’d like to make is that leather products are, in fact, truly sustainable and shouldn’t be blamed and demonized just by considering its name and its’ relation to meat and livestock industry, but in contrary, it’s an industry that truly help recycle by-products and reduce colossal amount of waste we have to throw away thus helping us to make the world cleaner with long-lasting, natural, bio-degradable products like leather.