Is Veg Tan Leather Good For The Environment?

[BAD HIDE]

It's an old post, but curiously relevant. Old hands might not give a shit, but as an environmentally conscious newcomer, I kinda do.

Kinda.

Stephen, you bring up some interesting points. I don't know how Cr III is obtained, but it's some sort of chemistry mumbo jumbo mixed with mining and whatnot - Oak bark is pretty damn simple. Get bark, grind it, soak it. Tannins are found throughout the plant biosphere, but there's only a few species ideal for industrialized tannin production, Mimosa being one. But trees grow back. Anything on an aggressively exponential scale is going to be insanely detrimental to the environment and eventually exhaust resources, but modern forest management has only improved conservation and provided higher yields. 200 or 3000 year old leather doesn't bother me, conditions were right for that material to resist decay. There's nothing in that material that wasn't natural. We haven't seen 3000 year old chrome tan, but given the same or more ideal conditions for that tannage, we can probably assume the same results. Neither of which is near the guaranteed 1000+ year decomposition cycles of synthetics like vinyl and plastics. Water consumption and treatment is a problem with all tanneries, but I can only assume the ones operating on US soil are far more responsible than their overseas counterparts. Horween is practically in downtown Chicago for Pete's sake.

The way it stands right now, 95% of the world's leather is chromium tanned, and a majority of that comes from poorly regulated countries. Even buying chrome tan creeps me out a bit because, unless it's Horween, retailers do not list list where they get it from. Veg tan can be a more natural and sustainable product if done on the right scale and regulated properly, but it also can be just as destructive if managed poorly or operating on an unsustainable scale.

I don't want to ruin this planet for my kids, but I know by even having this computer, I'm part of the problem choking our planet into an unsustainable mess. I use what's best for the job and try to order the most from the devil I know - Horween and Herman Oak - companies known for quality and consciousness. I also lean towards using leathers that are tanned in an old fashioned and natural way, something I could even do myself if I had the acreage and willingness to deal with the smell. I sorta give a shit, but since I also see a big chunk of unsustainability in our daily lives, I kinda just wanna use the good stuff and not worry about it.

[Tesla Ranger]

It is a topic as complicated as it is relevant. I'd like to thank the last two posters for offering some clear data on the issue. Tanning is a very resource intensive series of processes with a long array of byproducts, many of which are toxic well before you get to the point of using tannins or chromium. It's difficult for me to envision any tanning process that is ecologically neutral, much less "eco-friendly" (which, to be fair, is usually a misleading term). When it was done on a relatively small scale in geographically sparse areas the environment could generally withstand the impact (provided over hunting wasn't an issue). The industrial revolution, among a great many other things, permitted the process to be done on a far more concentrated and massive scale. In some ways this has been beneficial (both for the environment and for humanity), and in some ways it hasn't. These improvements resulted in far more pollutants being concentrated in specific areas but they also allowed for potentially less harmful processes (such as chrome tanning).

The proverbial elephant in the room is that there's only so much leather for us to work with as a byproduct of how massive the cattle industry has grown. The USDA estimates that there are somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5 billion (that's 1,500,000,000) cattle currently sharing the planet with us and every other organism. This number is absurdly higher than what the planet could naturally sustain, or even what we could sustain prior to the invention of synthetic fertilizers (itself an interesting if controversial topic). As the human population has grown (which it's been doing at a rate I can only describe as stupendous since the industrial revolution) the organisms we cultivate have grown with us. Both these numbers have grown far larger than the natural environment could ever sustain and are only possible due to advances like synthetic fertilizers. I suppose it's up to the reader whether that itself is a net positive or not. All these cattle do create a problem in the global environment. Aside from the swaths of land that have been re-purposed for their care and maintenance and the generally abysmal state of "corporate farming", cows happen to release a fair deal of methane. This is a byproduct of their ruminant digestive systems. It isn't anything new or undiscovered and when there were only a few million cattle the environment could safely absorb that amount of methane. That's no longer the case when we've increased the number of cattle so exponentially. The agricultural industry is firmly seated along with energy production and mass manufacturing as the biggest causes of climate change.

The good news (and there is good news) is that it is that of the three it is the one with the best potential for innovation. An excellent example of this are several livestock farms in the US and UK (and possibly elsewhere) that use the methane generated by their cattle to generate their own power. Rather than release that methane into the atmosphere they recapture it to be energy-independant. Several of them wind up creating an energy positive, meaning they're making more electricity than their using, and they're paid for that energy when it's added to the power grid. This creates an obvious financial incentive for relatively small farmers (I haven't heard of any corporate farms making use of this, but hopefully they are) to make this change.

In the end, whether or not something is good, indifferent, or bad for the global ecosystem (which includes us, coincidentally) is a terribly complicated topic. Many of the conclusions seem to rely on personal ethics and philosophy as much as science. Is it better to have a larger human population despite the burden it places on the planet? Technology itself is, by its very definition, just a tool but have we as a species used it to better or worsen our planet on a whole? Like many other questions, we as a species are still deciding the answers today. The topic has become tied up in money and politics (on both sides, though one side far more than the other) which has resulted in it only becoming more complicated. I still think we each have to come to own opinions on these topics, hopefully after a careful review of the process with as little hyperbole as possible.

For me personally it underscores that the material I'm working with was at one point a living thing's skin. That organism may not have died just so I could use its skin to make a bag or some coasters, but it's still true that I wouldn't have that material if not for it's death. So, and this may be just for me, it feels important that I should keep that in mind and try to utilize that material to the best of my ability. I should employ it as efficiently and expertly as possible, regardless of what it is I'm producing. The industry isn't going to change much based on any action I might take and there are a great many unsustainable practices I take advantage of on a daily basis. But that only makes it more important that I be aware of the What, the Where, the How, and the Why so I be responsible in my daily life. Our ancestors, especially when they lived closer to their sources of food, knew the value of sustainability, of not damaging the land. I believe it's all the more important to conserve that tradition and mentality in a time when a global economy and technology combine to keep our food sources out of sight and out of mind.

[mojave]

Why worry about veg. tan leather and the environment, solar fields and wind generators do more damage to the environment, land, and wildlife than any dried leather. The solar field near Las Vagas, NV. has killed all wildlife in that area. Are you wanting the EPA soldiers to regulate the leather industry? If so, keep writing, their reading.

That all I have to say about that.