Renewability range

Leather chemicals based on renewable ingredients

Renewable chemicals, or raw materials of renewable and bio-based origin, have been used in leather chemicals in specific areas already for a long time, especially in Fatliquors.

Over time, however, many leather chemicals have been developed from petro-chemical origin replacing bio-based products due to a completely different awareness and environment in past times, and because they delivered at that time sometimes a better performance. Times are changing now.

Renewability range

Our wet end products for high renewability

Our renewability range encompasses retanning agents and fatliquors with improved renewability with excellent haptic and properties to enable more sustainable leather production. The range offers a combination of existing products as well as innovative new products to allow better environmental and ecological advantages, ensuring the right performance in leather making.

Discover our bio-based product range and EcoSimplicity tool to improve your leather recipe and processes towards more renewability and sustainability.

Renewable chemicals for a more sustainable leather production 

Royal Smit & Zoon promotes the use of leather chemicals based on bio-based ingredients. We innovate with chemicals with more renewability by replacing fossil-based materials by bio-based alternatives. The final goal is to have leather chemicals which are completely based on renewable origins.

We aim for those innovative new renewable or bio-based (wholly or partially) leather chemicals to provide excellent leather performance, can be easily handled by tanneries during the leather making process and can be processed well in the effluent treatment with a minimal environmental footprint.

Ultimately, Royal Smit & Zoon aims that the leather chemicals we provide for leather making enable full circularity. Our approach towards this ecoSimplicity which is at the heart our Simplicity approach and add the (re)design using renewable chemicals.

What are renewable materials?

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 also can be seen as an alternative way of expressing the bio-based content of a material.

ZDHC level 3 certified

All our bio-based solutions  are ZDHC level 3 certified. The renewability is calculated based on our production recipes (raw material composition) and information provided for the ingredients by our suppliers. As with the raw materials, the calculation is based on active matter only. The above information is also included in our Product Passport.

Royal Smit & Zoon is developing better renewable products as, for example, in our LIFE Biopol project. In the retanning agents, until then, we recommend the Optitan range which are optimized petrochemical based retanning agents to minimize the footprint and provide excellent leather performance.

Royal Smit & Zoon will continue to add new products to this list that make the difference to better chemistry and leather making.

More information

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