August 13, 2025

Circulating leather back to its proper place

Last week, the average tariff rates for goods going into the US jumped to 18-20%, the highest since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff era in the 1930s and one that follows an average tariff rate that has been 2.5-3% continuously since the late 1990s after decades of around 5%.

While the justification is one of national security, this level of tariffs looks likely to remain long-term to support government revenue. With additional punitive ones for purely political reasons, such as those placed on Brazil and India, this constantly changing approach will greatly impact leather supply chains.

Also last week, we saw the start of the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in Geneva; with an immense petrochemical lobby plus a few determined nations such as Russia and Saudi Arabia now joined by the U.S. in opposing those seeking constraint on production and transparency about the chemical additives used, a successful outcome looks impossible.

The 2024 PlastChem report and database confirmed 16,000 as the figure for the number of “extra” chemicals associated with plastics, with at least 4,200 identified as a concern due to their hazardous properties, including persistence, bioaccumulation, mobility and toxicity.

Common types of additives include:

  • Stabilisers (e.g. antioxidants, UV Stabilisers, HALS) to prevent degradation from heat, light, or oxygen
  • Flame retardants, such as brominated compounds
  • Plasticisers for increased flexibility, fillers, blowing agents, antistatic agents, lubricants, fragrances and more

It is these additives that leach out or change over time and accelerate the failures of plastic in use. This means plastics have an extremely limited useful life, but the basic monomer remains intact for hundreds of thousands of years before breaking down.

With the solution proposed by the petrochemical lobby being end-of-life collection and recycling long discredited, a failure to come to an agreement could well create a major consumer backlash. Less than 10% is currently collected, and that number is actually falling, and only some of what gets collected is recycled, with much being burnt. Whatever the lobby does, it cannot hide the fact that most plastics are a major planetary danger.

The Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) says that 30%, perhaps as much as 40%, of the world’s hides and skins no longer get tanned into leather, with most disposed of by burying or burning. This loss, if true, appears to have happened since 1990 when nearly all hides and skins were tanned.

The big three might give leather a chance

Converging trends involving concern about the implications of landfill and burning unused raw hides, worries about the health dangers of plastics, and the creation of planning and investment chaos by the U.S. tariff policy might offer a pivotal opportunity for leather.

If reshoring is considered, it becomes possible to imagine the leather industry moving back toward fuller utilisation of hides and skins, but it would require several aligned shifts – economic, regulatory and perceptual.

Leather must recognise that the rapid loss of 30–40% of its raw material has been tied to:

  • Geographic dislocation – As tanning moved to fewer global hubs, hides in non-export-friendly locations became uneconomical to ship
  • Meat industry consolidation – The hide became a byproduct of less importance to meat processors; in some markets it is now treated as waste, although in many countries smaller dispersed abattoirs have lost collection having been deemed too “inefficient” to collect
  • Consumer narratives – Misperceptions about leather’s environmental impact have persuaded some brands to be more open to substitutes
  • Fashion shifts – Synthetic “leathers” (PVC, PU and now “biobased” synthetics) became cheaper, more predictable, and more design-flexible for some applications; and they were heavily promoted
  • Leather industry inactivity – The leather trade was nervous about its ability to tackle negative narratives and backed away. There was a belief that marketing leather would damage the price structure by making leather too expensive.

There is no doubt that plastics are losing their shine, and concern over plastics is growing because of microplastic health risks and their contribution to the “throwaway” culture. This pushes societal thinking more towards:

  • Longer-life products
  • Natural materials that biodegrade without harmful residues
  • Circular economy thinking.

Leather – properly sourced and processed – fits neatly into that frame, but the industry needs to make that case clearly and credibly. All the battles ongoing with legislators and in preparation for COP30 in November are vital.

While international trade will always remain vital for the leather industry, picking up unused material for local manufacturing makes great sense and has led to the concept of micro tanneries starting in a number of locations. Onshoring only helps if there is tanning and finishing capacity within reach, which will need new tanneries or significant expansion in some countries.

Concern over waste management and environmental costs have long made this appear a fantasy. I was involved in a good plan to build a new vegetable-tanned leather tannery in the UK that fell through only because of fearful shareholders and personal jealousies.

Clearly, modern ideas on water, energy and chemical usage, allied with bioremediation techniques, offer much more exciting opportunities that could attract forward-thinking investors. Still, further innovation in tanning to balance cleaner, lower-capex modular tanning systems that make medium-scale processing viable again is required.

  • Local hides from local abattoirs become more attractive to local manufacturers if imported components face higher duties
  • Shorter supply chains reduce carbon footprint – something brands can market
  • Tariff uncertainty discourages reliance on long, complex sourcing patterns for synthetics.

What has become clear is that there is existing and growing demand from leather artisans to source more local leather and be a living part of a dynamic supply chain from farmer to consumer. Current worries about low-grade hides would diminish as this sort of chain would lead to an improvement, and smaller, more responsive tanneries would return to a rounding system to send every hide and skin section into the correct tanning system for a saleable end use; a method that accepts most defects as “proof of life”, as Alice Robinson of British Pasture Leather wrote in her book Field, Fork, Fashion.

It would also be important to get some brand buy-in – but with a commitment to leather as a strategic, valuable material, not just a niche luxury.

In fighting for such a programme, tanners will need to create clear differentiation from plastics and synthetics, build full local supply chains from farms, abattoirs and meatpackers through to brands and consumers, with strong authenticity, craft and care, fight for government/NGO alignment in support for regenerative farming methods, the correct GWP* calculation for methane, plus incentives for waste reduction that could make hide disposal less attractive, and consumer re-education: moving the narrative from “animal harm” to “by-product valorisation” and “long-life natural material”.

I believe there is a realistic opportunity for leather to reclaim some of that lost 40%, especially if plastic backlash, tariff policies and localisation trends continue to align. It will not happen without a coordinated effort across the supply chain to rebuild local processing and to position leather as a durable, healthy and responsible alternative to synthetics.



Michael Redwood

Leather chemist, writer, and advisor on responsible leather manufacturing and material strategy. This article was originally written for ILM.