More Sustainable Leather Chemistry
Last year - based on a research project at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences - representatives from the leather industry and academia jointly developed guiding principles for "more sustainable leather chemistry" in a productive and thoroughly intensive exchange. This provides actors in the leather industry (and related sectors) with concrete criteria for scrutinizing their own processes and products and, if necessary, developing them further.
The corresponding document contains in section 1 the mission statement, which consists of an introductory preamble (section 1.1), definitions of important terms related to the subject matter of the mission statement (1.2) and the actual goals (1.3). An annex explains the context for the mission statement, which consists of existing normative requirements and those that may change in the context of the Green Deal (2.1), established conceptual approaches to sustainable chemistry (2.2) and previous project steps (2.3).
The project "More Sustainable Chemistry along the Leather Supply Chains" at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (h_da) aims to support the leather industry in its transformation towards more sustainable chemistry. It is based on a co-creative collaboration between actors within the leather context and the interdisciplinary university team. In the project, the actors developed together an optimistic future scenario for the year 2035, in which the industry – on a global scale - successfully masters the challenges of a more sustainable leather chemistry. To specify the desired future scenario, some actors developed a mission statement "More Sustainable Leather Chemistry" in a further process step.
The full document is now available for download here: https://doi.org/10.48444/h_docs-pub-378