Mike Redwood
Sustainability
16th November 2012
The danger of self destruction by being careless with the facts
POSTED ON NOVEMBER 16, 2012 An Alumni Event It is easy to rush on and forget your friends in this modern world. Yet as we see China continue to rise in importance we all know how important connections – “guanxi” – are for moving forward in business. In the west we used to maintain our […]
20th September 2012
Stahl, UNIDO and Owen Paterson joins the British Government
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 24, 2012 Two items below but multiple subjects A funny thing happened in Waalwijk today In Waalwijk today Stahl opened their new laboratory and a happy crowd drank copious amounts of beer and wine. Nothing new there. With openings in India and China and constant development in the Netherlands we have seen […]
14th September 2012
Puma is asking for reduced duties for plastic shoes on environmental grounds – big mistake
WHY PUMA IS WRONG ABOUT LEATHER Recently Puma has been saying that it would like to stop using leather and give preference to plastics.. Puma is not the first company to talk about discontinuing using leather as a result of its supposed poor carbon footprint. We have heard such comments from Timberland and from Pentland […]
10th September 2012
A letter to the Washington Post
Last month, during the Olympics, the Washington Post ran an article saying for an environmental games althletes should use sythetic footwear rather than leather. It relied on an old study from a California College which itself was based on older generic information. Carbon footprinting is an evolving topic, about which more soon; but meanwhile here […]
20th July 2012
Honorary Degrees, Make In Britain, Puma and Leather
POSTED ON JULY 20, 2012 three items below from June and July 2012 Getting it right by degrees Yesterday the leather degrees were awarded by the University of Northampton. Despite all the changes in Higher Education in the UK as government tries to work out how to manage costs and the future of skills and […]
14th July 2012
The Dangers of Greenwash
After over a hundred years of almost total dominance it is good that tanners are looking for alternates to chromium. We need relentless research and innovation to bring out the best in our sustainable raw material and to make it perform better in a Cradle to Cradle format. Equally it is great to see older […]
26th June 2012
Puma and its talk about not using leather
Recently in the Financial Times an article related to the Rio+20 Summit quoted Puma as saying that it would like to stop using leather. Puma is not the first company to talk about discontinuing using leather as a result of its supposed poor carbon footprint. We have heard such comments from Timberland and from Pentland […]
28th May 2012
Hemp, describing leather in a materials glossary and Hide to High Street
POSTED ON MAY 28, 2012 two items below Tanning by a distance New terms such as on line and blended learning are becoming increasingly used and with time at a premium in business not all companies are willing to send staff to Northampton for long periods. A physical presence is of importance in order to […]
22nd May 2012
LeatherNaturally! defending leather against wrongful attacks
LeatherNaturally! put out a statement when an anti leather video was published by Stella McCartney. The video was full of errors. This is now a longer suggestion to counter those who write articles or publish web sites that are aggressively against leather without consideration of the true facts. It deals with many of the comments […]
15th May 2012
A Green Glossary from Rohan
Thinking about the links between leather and textiles moves one’s thoughts to a wide variety of natural materials such as wool and linen. Understanding the terminology of the various aspects of the environment has become very complex. Issue, mostly incorrectly reported, around chromium have lead tanners to make some dreadfully improper claims for chrome free […]