Eco-friendlier Leather From India
by Kimberley D. Mok, Montreal, Canada on 01. 8.08
Though it is a material with lots of toxic by-products, leather is probably not going to go away soon (and probably not soon enough for those who understandably see it from the animal rights perspective). And though you may ask, whatever happened to sacred cows, leather aficionados nevertheless have an eco-friendlier choice now: scientists based near Chennai, India have now developed a more environmentally-friendly and cost-efficient method for tanning leather.
Raghava Rao and a group of researchers at the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) in Adyar have found a simple way to reduce the amount of chemical pollutants involved in tanning by merely reversing the order of tanning and post-tanning steps. By doing so, they were able to cut the amount of chemicals released by 82% and increased energy efficiency by 40%, without observable reduction in quality.
Tanning is an otherwise intensely chemical process which transforms decomposable dead animal skins into leather, but not without discharging serious pollution into water – in India, toxic tanning pollutants end up in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and pose a great health risk to both aquatic ecosystems and humans.
In all, around 250 chemicals are used in tanning, with chromium sulfate being the most dangerous. Other chemicals include alcohol, coal tar, degreasing agents, dyes, emulsifiers, formaldehyde, formic acid, lead, lime, resin blenders, sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, sulfuric acid, waxes, and zinc. Skins are transferred from vat to vat, soaked and treated and dyed.
Due to lower labour costs and more lax environmental controls, the tanning industry has grown in countries such as China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, capturing 60% of the world’s leather production. As Rao rightly points out, "The significance is tremendous in the context of environmental challenges being faced by the leather industry."
::Science Daily
See also ::Can Leather Be a TreeHugger-Friendly Material?, ::Entermodal: Vegetable Tanned Luxury Leather, ::Leather tanning in India: Environmental regulations and firms compliance
Image: The Hindu
Cow leather from India? Is that's kind of like pig farms in Israel?
Cows were sacred because they were more important as milk and plowing animals. Now that it is not so much the case, they are not so much sacred....
I was thinking the exact same thing. Is it bad karma only to eat beef, or is harming cows at all bad karma in Hinduism?
There are about 200 million non-Hindu's in India.
Maybe the cows die from old age :P
Maybe the workers are not Hindu. Islam is the largest minority religion in India.
"Green" leather = greenwashing. Raising cows produces methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas (much more so than CO2). If you really want to go green, stop consuming animal products.
200 million you say? I'm still surprised. 200 million makes that population about the size of a rounding error of India's current population, which is over a billion. The thought that a minority of folks there are slaughtering a revered animal might incite violence with the majority if the word got out, I think. Muslims aren't the only religious group that have resorted to violence at perceived insults and blasphemies.
What about vegetable-tanned leather? Isn't that completely "chemical" free?
Technically, Hindus hold all life sacred -- cows just have special significance.. That said, just as there are plenty of Jews and Muslims who eat pork and plenty of Christians who DON'T do what Jesus would do, there are plenty of Hindus that are not vegetarian. I've seen leather goods for sale and beef on restaurant menus in India, though both are decidedly more rare than they are in the US (meat in India is usually chicken, lamb, or goat). Hindus still have a great deal of respect for animal life, though, and you'll find cows standing in the middle of some of the busiest streets in Delhi with traffic working its way around them. I imagine people would react much differently to the killing of a cow in the middle of a city street than they would to the killing of one in the privacy of a slaughterhouse. I've seen plenty of malnourished animals in India, but I can't recall ever seeing a dead one (aside from those in my friends' food, of course).
As for the Muslim population being a "rounding error," they make up a slightly larger percentage of the Indian population than that made up by African Americans in the US population. I wouldn't really call that a rounding error. And if not for partition that percentage would be higher (a lot of Indian Muslims moved to Pakistan after independence).
slaughtering cows is illegal in only certain provinces in India. In others, it's perfectly legal.
there are sometimes problems when the cows are raised in places where the slaughter is illegal and then driven to slaughter houses in areas where it is legal.
I still think that buying vintage is best. I just did a whole blog on the LLJ (Little Leather Jacket) and the great, inexpensive options on Ebay. Check it out.
www.righteousrestyle.com