The prestigious scientific journal Sustainability publishes the study on the biodegradability and compostability of leather
The project developed by the team of researchers of A3 Leather Innovation Center UdL was promoted by Leather Cluster Barcelona Sustainability, a benchmark journal…
The project developed by the team of researchers of A3 Leather Innovation Center UdL was promoted by Leather Cluster Barcelona
Sustainability, an international benchmark journal in sustainable development, has published the scientific study analysing the compostability of leather and other materials, carried out in 2023 by A3 Leather Innovation Center UdL on behalf of Leather Cluster Barcelona.
The study concluded, with scientific data, that leather degrades far more than the synthetic and artificial alternatives that imitate it.
One of the most significant conclusions is that during the composting processes, while the various samples of natural leather analysed showed total or partial degradation over a period of 21 to 35 days depending on the type of leather, the samples of alternative materials showed no sign of degradation after 90 days from the start of the compostability test.
Sustainability is an international, interdisciplinary, academic and open-access journal on environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability, published by the publisher MDPI. Based in Basel, Switzerland, MDPI has the mission of fostering open scientific exchange in all its forms and across all disciplines. Its aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical research related to the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities in as much detail as possible, in order to promote scientific predictions and impact assessments of global change and development.
The publisher MDPI operates Sustainability and the group’s other journals with a rigorous and transparent process: peer review, or assessment by experts. Peer review is a procedure used in academic and scientific publishing whose fundamental aim is to ensure the quality and validity of the work before its publication and its dissemination to the rest of the scientific community. In this process, other researchers specialising in the subject of the work review it before publication.
The study carried out by the team of researchers of A3 Leather Innovation Center UdL and promoted by Leather Cluster Barcelona set out to determine the physical and chemical differences, as well as other thermometric properties, between seven different types of finished leather and three leather imitations: a material of synthetic origin (commercially, synthetic leather) and two alternatives based on raw materials of biological origin (pineapple and cactus) which attempt to imitate leather in the fashion industry (commercially known as vegan leather).
This project received the support of ACCIÓ, the public agency for the competitiveness of Catalan business attached to the Ministry of Business and Labour of the Generalitat de Catalunya, within the framework of the grants for initiatives to strengthen the competitiveness of the entities forming part of the Catalonia Clusters Programme, related, among other things, to the implementation of strategic changes, innovations and new trends in the cluster or in the companies of the sector.
Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector within the framework of Shared Value policies. The cluster is an accredited entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and is supported by Acció.