The concern with the environmental impacts from the manufacturing industry is currently recurrent for the most different industries. For the leather industry it is no different.

What few people know is that numerous questions have already been answered in the face of the greater concern that is leather environmentally friendly?

The right answer is YES.

Check out some frequently asked questions and their answers below.

Is leather sustainable?

Leather as a raw material is renewable, and in products it is long-lasting and repairable.

It is made from a by-product of the food industry. If this by-product were not converted into leather, it would be thrown into a landfill, a significant environmental risk.

Can leather be recycled?

Leather can be repaired, refurbished and re-purposed, but it has also been recycled for well over 70 years into leather fiber board, a material used in footwear, or sometimes as ground up trimmings for stuffing boxing punch bags. A lot of R&D is currently ongoing to expand the applications for leather recycling.

Leather is based on a renewable material.

Is leather biodegradable?

As a natural product, leather will biodegrade in a typical landfill in 10 to 50 years, depending on the type of leather. A typical Polyvinyl Chloride plastic material takes 500+ years to break down in the same
environment.

Keeping leather in an area that prevents rot can extend its life cycle exponentially. Some leather artifacts can last thousands of years if you preserve them well enough. The situation is even worse with faux or synthetic leather.