Leather Naturally didn't think anyone would notice when, at the same time, they signed a manifesto brought to COP28 (also COP29), undermining and criticising this anti-deforestation regulation. The manifesto also claimed methane from cattle does not contribute to the climate crisis, but is merely in the "natural carbon cycle".
Of course, this is nonsense. Due to methane (84 times more potent than carbon within a 20 year timeframe) animal-derived leather is likely the single most climate impactful material to produce.
The leather industry has long trumpeted its sustainability while lobbying against the common good. In fact, months prior to all this, its lobbyists contacted members of the European Parliament, calling for leather to be excluded from the deforestation regulation as they have no influence over or connection to cattle farming, and therefore to deforestation.
According to the leather lobby, the industry charitably "recycles" skins that would otherwise go to landfill – nevermind that the root of the leather value chain is cattle farming. Nor that often, that value chain is owned by multinational conglomerates like JBS (known for its Amazonian deforestation, human rights and animal abuses) from feedlots through to slaughterhouses and tanneries.
"Do one thing today: tell someone that leather is a recycled material", says the Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) on its social media accounts. Newly sourced leather, made from a recently chemically processed skin removed from a freshly slaughtered cow's carcass, is not recycled. But as the old adage says, a lie told enough times becomes the truth.
The "recycled" myth is built upon the carefully created deception of leather as a by-product, despite it being a profitable co-product. LHCA itself (quietly) says more cattle would be raised for slaughter if leather became more popular and profitable. Slaughterhouses operate on razor thin margins similar to the portion of profit extracted from skin sales. Without these sales, cattle farming and slaughtering operations for meat and leather are forced to shrink – in turn reducing their massive environmental impact and kill count.
The problem though, is that this myth-making machine and its lobbyists are discreet and unseen by most of us. Did you know the leather industry also lobbied to make it harder for Indigenous communities to prove ties to their native land (making it easier for land to be desecrated for cattle ranching)? Or, that it lobbies to change long-accepted methods of global warming potential calculations, because their new one could make leather appear climate negative without doing anything differently (in a move from GWP100 to GWP*)? Perhaps you did not, and the same is true for fashion brands buying skins to design with.
All we see is the curation of green- and ethics-washed messages pushed out on social media: "Leather is not harmful to animals," or "Methane is a part of the natural carbon cycle." Perhaps the strongest of their public campaign cries, is that leather is responsibly made simply because it is not plastic. But unfortunate for us all, more than one deeply problematic thing exists at once.
Undoubtedly, we must end polyurethane and other plastic material use in fashion. Also without doubt, even in a shift beyond fossil fuels these are made from, to totally renewable energy across the globe, we would still face a temperature rise over 1.5°C. That is, unless we also reduce farmed animal production emissions by at least 50% over the next decade.
The United Nations makes it clear that doing so means major shifts to animal-free production.
The charity I founded and direct, Collective Fashion Justice, released a report at the end of last year called 'Fabricating the truth', investigating the leather industry disinformation and lobbying preventing this much needed shift in fashion.
Almost 80 innovation companies are producing next-gen leather and animal-free and plastic-free materials like MIRUM, Celium, Treekind are increasingly available, made with plants, fruit agricultural waste and other bio-inputs.
The sooner we can unmask Big Leather for what it really is, the sooner we can all enjoy a genuinely responsible fashion industry where these new materials are the standard, not land and climate impactful, chemically processed animal skins.
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