Sustainability Consumer leather in the circular economy
Leather recycling can be an eco-friendly practice that helps reduce waste and extend the lifespan of leather products: ■ Reuse and repair: One of the simplest ways to recycle leather is to reuse it or repair leather items. This can involve repairing or altering leather garments, bags or shoes to give them a new life and prevent them from being discarded.
■ Upcycling: Upcycling involves transforming old or unwanted leather items into new products with a higher value or purpose. For example, leather scraps can be repurposed into smaller accessories like wallets, keychains or jewelry.
■ Leather recycling facilities: Specialised recycling facilities exist that collect and process leather waste. They may use mechanical or chemical processes to break down the leather into fibres or pulp, which can be used to make new leather products or non-leather materials.
■ Composting: In some cases, leather scraps can be composted under specific conditions. Treated leather, which is free from harmful chemicals and additives, can be added to compost piles or facilities that process organic waste.
■ Leather fibre recovery: Leather waste can be processed to extract fibres. These fibres can be mixed with other materials to create composite materials for various applications, such as insulation or padding.
■ Donation and second-hand markets: Donating leather goods that are in good condition or selling them through second-hand markets is another way to recycle leather.
Not all leather products can be easily recycled due to treatments, finishes or mixed materials. However, the recycling options mentioned above provide some sustainable alternatives to minimise leather waste and environmental impact.
takes leather and gives back leather,” he says. “We can’t get rid of all of the leather or all the fresh hides that go to the landfill or the incinerator, but we can slow it down, and slow down the rate of accumulating waste,” Fox explains. Cost-wise, Morrison says that Enspire is competitive with other materials and is cheaper than virgin leather. Moreover, it has more green attributes than top grain leather and all the same physical attributes – except it provides better production yields because it doesn’t have flaws and comes on a uniform roll.
“In the fashion space, we work with everyone from super luxury at the highest levels of fashion all the way down to the biggest discount stores.”
Scott Kuhlman, Recircled
“We go to market trying to offer benefits to everyone in the chain,” says Fox. “For the purchasing agent, the price will be less. For the plant manager, he gets a better yield, and the marketing manager gets a new product with a great sustainability story.”
Post-consumer waste leather When it comes to post-consumer leather waste, Sustainable Composites has partnered with Recircled, a US-based company that has pioneered a way to harvest leather and other materials from finished goods. The leather that Recircled reclaims
14
from used fashion items – as well as unsold goods – is sent to Sustainable Composites to be recycled into new material.
In what the company calls “the infrastructure for fashion in the circular economy”, co-founder Scott Kuhlman says they break down footwear into parts, each of which has value. When it comes to the leather, “we harvest the biggest and best pieces and parts”.
In the early stages, Recircled initially disassembled items manually but is now automating the process, which will help lower the cost further. Another step “will be showing design teams ‘this is how we take a shoe apart, now design into that process so we can get 50% of the area of the shoe recovered at high value’,” Kuhlman explains.
After Recircled harvests the leather pieces, they are then sorted and graded. “Grade one can go to Sustainable Composites. Grade two can go to them also, but it will be a lower-value piece of recycled leather... it’s fine for interior pieces,” Kuhlman says. He notes that they are developing markets in other industries that can use these materials, such as the furniture industry, where many models have a lot of hidden pieces and parts, for example. “In the fashion space, we work with everyone from super luxury at the highest levels of fashion all the way down to the biggest discount stores,” Kuhlman explains. This is becoming more important as regions like the European Union and some US state are outlawing the destruction or disposal of shoes and clothing – whether it’s an unsold luxury handbag or a pair of mass market sneakers. The quantities of merchandise can be staggering when looking at unsold goods along with discontinued, flawed and damaged items. This is especially true with goods that may have been stored for some time.
Recircled has two factory facilities, one in Cozad, Nebraska, and a second in Prato, Italy. Now, it is about to partner with a very large company and will be opening facilities throughout Asia and adding post-industrial waste recycling, which can process leather waste as well. “We’re working with companies that are very unexpected. We had no idea that they use tremendous amounts of leather. It’s not that they’re going to get away from using hides at all. It’s more about how do they offset it and how can they use more,” he says. Ultimately, it comes down to helping the leather industry, according to Sustainable Composites. “Obviously, top grain leather is a great product, but it generates scrap. We want to help the leather industry by having a good product made from the scrap, and we think that over time there’s an opportunity for the leather industry and our product to replace some of the faux leathers and leather alternatives because of some of the issues with the use of synthetic material,” Tymon concludes. ●
Leather International /
www.leathermag.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31
