Leather Cluster Barcelona joins World Leather Day

The international bodies of the leather industry, Leather Working Group (LWG) and Leather Naturally (LN), have joined forces to establish 30 March as World Leather Day.

This global initiative aims to raise public awareness of the positive attributes of leather.

The central message of World Leather Day in this first edition in 2022 is “Leather is a durable, versatile and recycled material”.

Leather Cluster Barcelona supports the initiative and joins the celebration of World Leather Day, championing leather as a benchmark for the circular economy and an example of sustainable fashion.

Hides are a waste product arising from meat consumption, the main source of protein for 90% of the world’s population. The leather industry recovers and recycles this waste from the food sector, turning it into a by-product to be reused as a new raw material. The tanning process gives animal hides a second life and upgrades them into elegant, fine products that are useful to society.

The leather industry contributes to responsible and sustainable consumption, upgrading a waste product to produce durable consumer goods: a leather article can last a lifetime. In this sense, leather is a timeless material that can be used for many years and is therefore a good that helps reduce consumerism while adding elegance and style. Leather stands in contrast to fast fashion, throwaway fashion, whose enormous environmental impacts have recently begun to come to light.

On this World Leather Day, Leather Cluster Barcelona reaffirms its commitment to the sustainable use of natural resources, minimum environmental impact in production, and efficient management of the waste and by-products generated by the leather sector.

Along these lines, the cluster is carrying out cross-cutting strategic projects with all the players in the leather industry value chain in order to optimise the valorisation of by-products and waste, and the recirculation of wastewater.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector. The cluster is an accredited body within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.