Whitepaper: Renewability of materials in the leather value chain

Renewability is one of the building blocks of sustainability. But what does renewability mean? How can it be measured and how can it contribute to lowering your environmental impact as a brand or tannery?

The purpose of this paper is to:

1. provide an understanding of the concept of renewability
2. zoom in on the renewability of leather, also in comparison to alternative materials and
3. give an insight in how we, at Royal Smit & Zoon, innovate with bio-based ingredients, to avoid resource depletion and lower CO2 emissions.

When it comes to renewability, there are multiple interpretations and explanations. In this paper we share ours. This paper is meant to create an insight into the importance of renewability, thus using bio- based chemicals, and in the processes and chemistry of leather specifically. Moving towards bio-based ingredients, instead of fossil-based ones, is part of that goal.

According to EN ISO 14021:2016, renewable materials are materials composed of biomass and can be rapidly replenished. This definition is largely overlapping with the definition of bio-based materials. Similarly, the renewability concept can also be seen as an alternative way of expressing the bio-based content of a material.

According to definitions from the European Committee of Standardization, ‘Renewable material’ means a material that is composed of biomass and can be continually replenished. Related to this, a material can be called ‘rapidly renewable’ if it has a harvest cycle of ten years or less.