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Green Me
The dilemma with leather and other animal skins
Posted in Green Me
Intro
Other than the obvious ethical issues surrounding the culling of animals for their hides, in recent years studies by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NGOs such as PETA have discovered that the environmental impact caused by our reliance on meat and its by-products is neither sustainable nor ecologically benign.
Meat production is responsible for 18% of all manmade greenhouse gases, with a single dairy cow emitting 19.3 pounds of methane annually. When compared to transportation, which accounts for 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, you can begin to see why not eating meat on a Monday makes sense.
Factoring in the resources needed to rear cattle, producing a fur or animal skin jacket consumes 20 times the amount of energy needed to produce a coat made from natural fibres or synthetic materials.
In India, the leather industry is more harmful to the environment than the textile, medicine, fertilizer and paper industries combined.
Animal skins used for clothing and accessories are loaded with caustic, toxic chemicals that prevent them from decomposing – the very opposite of what we expect from an organic resource.
Although leather-makers like to tout their products as “biodegradable” and “eco-friendly,” the process of tanning stabilizes the collagen or protein fibres so that they actually stop biodegrading.
Groundwater near leather tanneries in developing countries have been found to contain critically high levels of lead, formaldehyde, and even cyanide, causing cancer and other fatal illnesses in nearby populations.
Most leather produced in the United States and around the world is chrome-tanned. All wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency. A chrome-tanning facility wastes nearly 15,000 gallons of water and produces up to 2,200 pounds of “solid waste” – for example, hair, flesh, and trimmings – for every ton of hides that it processes.
Raising animals whose skins eventually become leather creates waste and pollution. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are consumed in livestock production – it takes about 35 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of beef, and 68 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of pork. At that rate, according to one Cornell University expert, the world’s fossil fuel resources will be exhausted within a decade.
Other than the obvious ethical issues surrounding the culling of animals for their hides, in recent years studies by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and NGOs such as PETA have discovered that the environmental impact caused by our reliance on meat and its by-products is neither sustainable nor ecologically benign.
Meat production is responsible for 18% of all manmade greenhouse gases, with a single dairy cow emitting 19.3 pounds of methane annually. When compared to transportation, which accounts for 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, you can begin to see why not eating meat on a Monday makes sense.
Factoring in the resources needed to rear cattle, producing a fur or animal skin jacket consumes 20 times the amount of energy needed to produce a coat made from natural fibres or synthetic materials.
In India, the leather industry is more harmful to the environment than the textile, medicine, fertilizer and paper industries combined.
Animal skins used for clothing and accessories are loaded with caustic, toxic chemicals that prevent them from decomposing – the very opposite of what we expect from an organic resource.
Although leather-makers like to tout their products as “biodegradable” and “eco-friendly,” the process of tanning stabilizes the collagen or protein fibres so that they actually stop biodegrading.
Groundwater near leather tanneries in developing countries have been found to contain critically high levels of lead, formaldehyde, and even cyanide, causing cancer and other fatal illnesses in nearby populations.
Most leather produced in the United States and around the world is chrome-tanned. All wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency. A chrome-tanning facility wastes nearly 15,000 gallons of water and produces up to 2,200 pounds of “solid waste” – for example, hair, flesh, and trimmings – for every ton of hides that it processes.
Raising animals whose skins eventually become leather creates waste and pollution. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are consumed in livestock production – it takes about 35 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of beef, and 68 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of pork. At that rate, according to one Cornell University expert, the world’s fossil fuel resources will be exhausted within a decade.