Carbon figures show why hides must not go to waste

Towards the end of 2020, the Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) began looking into an aspect of leather’s sustainability story that has commanded surprisingly little attention until now. It began asking what the environmental impact is, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of cattle hides that go to waste and decompose.

According to the European Commission, waste is the fourth- biggest source of emissions. The situation, in the European Union (EU) at least, has improved immensely in the last three decades and, with a share of 3%, emissions from waste lag far behind those arising from fuel combustion (77%), agriculture (10%) and industrial processes (8%) [1]. In 2018, total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU equalled 3.9 billion tonnes of CO2- equivalent. A 3% share of that total is 117 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent. Emissions from waste have fallen by 33% over the 28 years for which the EU has greenhouse gas inventories [2] but the trading bloc wants member states, municipalities, companies and citizens to lower the figure further. Disposing of material into landfill has an environmental impact and decreasing that impact would be a good thing.

Food for thought

This applies to cattle hides as it does to all other materials, but the amount of greenhouse gas emitted varies according to the nature of the material we throw away. In carrying out its analysis of this question, LHCA worked with the Leather Research Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati. While no specific study verifying the greenhouse gas arising from the decomposition of untreated hides came to light, the team in Cincinnati suggested that evaluating hides as a food waste was a reasonable basis on which to move forward. LHCA found an online tool set up by the local authorities in Oakland, California, to allow residents to calculate the emissions- savings they were able to make by generating less waste, including food waste. This tool suggested that food waste produces a CO2-equivalent of 88% of its mass [3].

After speaking to organisations including multi-stakeholder body the Leather Working Group, LHCA later said it thought 88% was “probably conservative”, which is to say the emissions from organic waste of this kind are probably higher. Certainly, a research team at RMIT university in Melbourne seems to think so. Its online tool calculates that one tonne of food waste would generate 1.9 tonnes of CO2-equivalent in emissions, more than double…