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An introduction to Leather and the Circular Economy
In the 2020s and beyond, the way we make and use products is going to have to shift from a linear model to a circular one. Influential institutions such as the European Commission realise that it’s only by achieving this change that they can meet targets for keeping global warming at a manageable level. What they may not have realised yet is that at least one sector, leather, is already a perfect fit for the circular economy model.
In December 2019, the European Commission published a 24-page document to explain a set of policy initiatives it is calling The European Green Deal, which has the aim of “resetting” the organisation’s commitment to tackling climate and environment-related challenges. The document describes such an undertaking as “this generation’s defining task”.
It wants the European Union (EU) to continue to be a prosperous body and for its economy to grow, but it wants this growth to become “decoupled” from the use of new resources. Renewable resources and the reuse of resources already in circulation will be fine, as long as they can be produced or recovered in sustainable ways.
In fact, this is precisely what the future looks like: using what we can grow and recover to make the products we use to live, keeping things for a long time, repairing them when we need to, passing them on for…
