Sustainability


22nd September 2024

Merino: a Royal Fibre

This is an article I wrote for a magazine I edited in 2008. It was written subsequent to a visit Sue and I made to New Zealand. My son, Steve, lived there and was running in a well known cross country race on South Island. It was sponsored by Icebreaker who were a new company […]

9th December 2022

Leather Industry Must Work Out its Own Context for Net-Zero and Chart a Plan

SECTOR SCANNER / STATE OF LEATHER 2022 / PART V COMMENTARY Leather Industry Must Work Out its Own Context for Net-Zero and Chart a Plan My article as published in texfash.com with a few very minor corrections that were missed when I rushed to send off my text   Each stakeholder in the leather industry, […]

2nd May 2021

Mary Chan won the 2020 Design-a-Bag competition

I was very pleased to be invited to interview Mary Chan who won last year’s APLF Design-a-Bag competition with an really clever use of leather to produce a design that perfectly meet the very specific criteria. It is really inspiring to hear her talk about her material choice and thoughts on sustainability. The video is […]

19th November 2019

Tanning has been built on social purpose

  As  tanners we often accept that in the past we were a polluting industry. We are users of offal so as cities began to worry about sanitation we were classified amongst the “nuisance trades”. This meant we were classed amongst a group that worked closely with butchers that included soap makers, tallow candlers, bone […]

23rd April 2018

SLTC focus on Northampton has proven win:win

POSTED ON APRIL 23, 2018 SLTC on a successful track The Society of Leather (SLTC) held its 121st Annual Conference at the University of Northampton on Saturday last, the 21st April.  I think I have been back to attend about one third of all them, so I have seem the gradual decline and growth in phases over […]

17th January 2018

Changing Culture and its implications

Over the last few weeks I have been using my weekly items for International Leather Maker to dig into the concept of changing culture. Not in a particularly sophisticated way, but rather to consider how good regulation, properly enforced can push companies along a positive path. From the about 1970 onwards the leather industry in […]

16th January 2018

The progressive leather industry

POSTED ON JANUARY 16, 2018 Waste is a design error Two 40 foot containers are put together to form one module of the new plant I first met Dietrich Tegtmeyer of Lanxess right at the beginning of this century – when Lanxess was still part of Bayer. I was working for ECCO based in Dongen […]

17th October 2017

Looking at the Danube

I have just spent the morning sailing in a tiny boat around the Danube Delta seeing how it is still trying to recover from the long communist era when the plains along the Danube were aggressively farmed to produce grains for Russia using huge amounts of fertiliser much of which ended up in the river. […]

1st July 2016

The importance of good science

POSTED ON JULY 1, 2016 Brexit “democracy needs experts” Given that our Corium Club alumni are all scientists to a greater or lesser degree many who read this will also be reading this week’s editorial in the New Scientist (NS). If not it is worth buying the magazine for. The point it makes is short […]

25th March 2016

Time to use more leather

This article appeared in the Observer (part of the Guardian group) in March 2016 and on behalf of LeatherNaturally! I sent the reply below: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/mar/13/is-it-time-to-give-up-leather-animal-welfare-ethical-lucy-siegle?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other Sirs, While it is admirable to hold strong views regarding the climate and the use of animals for meat and other things, to support these with a narrative built of […]