Adapta's mission is to fight against the waste and overproduction of materials. To achieve this, we find our leathers and fabrics in the dead stocks of luxury brands. We give these materials a second life.
And the good news is! Our positive environmental impact has doubled between 2020 and 2021. This excellent progress is reflected in our long-term, trust-based relationships with our 550 customers.
We're very pleased with this progress, and we hope to double these results every year. The desire to grow and to continue to unearth the treasures of dead stock remains omnipresent at Adapta.
Leather upcycling: what commitment can brands make?
For you, craftsmen, designers and fashion and decoration brands, the first commitment is to use a recycled material. By its very nature, leather is a sustainable material, as it is a waste product from the food industry that is reused. What's more, by its very nature, a hide has many eco-responsible properties: resistance, elasticity and permeability are all properties that extend the life of finished products.
The second commitment is to ‘upcycle’, which means fighting against the waste and overproduction of materials. To illustrate this, we took the example of a brand launching an animation of 150 bags, requiring 150m2 of leather. By using Adapta leathers, a brand doesn't need to launch a specific production process and saves the planet from using water and emitting CO2 :
The type of tanning: another step towards eco-responsibility?
The other day, we went to ADC for a conference on the circular economy. One of our customers told us about the lack of information on the leather industry, particularly on CSR issues.
We made a promise to ourselves that we'd write about what we learn as we go along, and we stopped at the first post. This customer mentioned several subjects, but our attention turned to the different tanning processes and their impact on the environment.
Indeed, on numerous occasions, customers acting in perfect good faith have commented, looking at our skins in the showroom: ‘anyway, I want to make a responsible collection, so I'm only going to use vegetable tanning’.
And yet, the link isn't as obvious as all that!
For the moment, there is no scientific study comparing chrome tanning and vegetable tanning. As all the experts who spoke at the Sustainable Leather Forum in September 2021 repeated: we don't know the difference in impact between the different types of tanning! Ademe's impact database, which is used for all analyses of the sector, is based on 2017 refashion data and does not have the information..
The answer, while simple, is also very disappointing, we agree.
Perhaps we need to explain more.
First of all, each tanner has his own tanning recipe. But in discussion with the CTC, here are two examples that give orders of magnitude on what it takes to produce 100Kgs of leather:
Chrome tanning | Chestnut vegetable tanning |
7 kgs of chrome taning | 30 kgs of chestnut tanning |
500 kgs of water | 2,5 tons of water |
8h of production (and therefore energy) | 3 days of production (and therefore energy) |
Possibility of recovering part of the tannin (the galette), controlled wastewater treatment in Europe | Not possible to recover tannin |
Biodegradable leather, but not compostible because the chrome will always be there | Biodegradable and compostable leather (no residue) |
As you can see, the answer is not so simple.
Add to that a number of subtleties: if the tannin is made from acorns and leaves, there's no problem, but if it's made from bark, don't forget that you have to destroy a tree.
Above all, it's important to remember that the choice of tanning depends on how we want to use the leather. Each type of tanning brings characteristics to the leather in terms of use, appearance and feel that cannot be found in another type of tanning:
Mineral tanning (chrome) | Vegetable tanning | Synthetic tanning (called ‘chrome free’, often aldehyde) |
80% of worldwide production | 15% of worldwide production | 5% of worldwide production |
Fast tanning (a few hours, even a day) | Slow tanning | Rather quick tanning |
All colours available, All hands available | Very marked brown colour => difficult to dye, mixed tanning required for light and bright colours and soft hands | All colours available, All hands available |
Chrome, with possible formation of CR VI (allergenic component). European tanneries, subject to REACH regulations, are required to comply with the threshold for this component at the end of their production process, i.e. 3mg/kg. | Metal free | Metal free. |
The cheapest for equivalent quality | The most expensive for equivalent quality | |
Very good heat resistance Good moisture absorption | Very good moisture absorption rate | |
Finally, each tanner can combine several tanning methods (mixed tanning) to obtain the qualities of the different processes.
Ranking the different tanning methods is therefore complex. The technical and environmental advantages and disadvantages of each tanning process need to be analysed. It would appear that France is waiting for a European database to provide a definitive answer to this question. We look forward to it :)
Then there will be the question of the raw material used, and therefore of traceability and transparency.
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