Eco-Footprinting of Leather

COTANCE welcomes the results of the UNIDO Leather Panel Meeting in Shanghai on Eco-Footprinting of Leather

At its Autumn Council meeting held in Bucharest on 26 September 2012, COTANCE delegates from Italy (UNIC), Spain (ACEXPIEL), France (FFTM), Germany (VDL), United Kingdom (UKLF), Netherlands (FNL), Sweden (SG) and Romania (APPBR) expressed their satisfaction on the results of the debate on Eco-Footprinting of Leather at the Shanghai UNIDO Leather Panel meeting of last 3 and 4 of September.

UNIDO Leather Panel members made up from renowned experts in the sector reviewed a Technical Report presented at an advanced state of completion providing the methodological key for sustaining the Leather sector’s claim to exclude from the LCA system boundaries of the leather value chain the burden of the livestock industry. The methodology is called “System expansion” and was developed in Denmark in the late 1990s for addressing the case of natural resources generating by-products and co-products.

The experts in Shanghai expressed clearly their view that the system boundaries of the leather value chain start at the slaughterhouse with the generation of the hide or skin as a by-product free from the environmental burden of meat and milk production, the actual drivers of their production.

Read more: Eco-Footprinting of Leather

Campaign for Leather

COTANCE launches its Permanent Leather Promotion Campaign
That’s Life, That’s Leather!

After offering in Shanghai the licensing of its Campaign material free of charge in the newly established Executive Committee of ICT, COTANCE decided, in its Bucharest Council meeting of September 26, 2012, the institution of a Permanent Leather Promotion Campaign under the slogan “That’s Life, That’s Leather!”.

Created in 2004, the COTANCE Campaign “That’s Life, That’s Leather!” proved that effective communication to the general public on leather does not need to be prohibitively costly and that even less wealthy leather trade associations can possibly sustain effective activities in one of their core competences: the defence and promotion of leather.

The 2004 Campaign was developed as a “postcard-exercise” where images of the omnipresence of leather in our lives testify to the usefulness of the material and the emotions that it engenders in people. The permanent COTANCE Campaign now launched in Bucharest intends to build on the success of the past and to develop a combination  of traditional and internet based communication tools.

Leather trade associations can join the Campaign by subscribing a simple licence agreement and possibly a voluntary financial contribution.

COTANCE invites leather sector operators to sponsor this initiative.