Photo: Frances Voon
Litehide™ lowers the environmental impact of leather making
- Eliminates salt from the leather preservation process
- Reduction of water and energy consumption
- Cuts 60% of TDS from a typical tanner’s effluent stream (Total Dissolved Solids)
- Greatly reduces contamination of fresh water supplies and soil
- Reduces carbon footprint, no need to ship waste product (heavy salt)
- Reduces hide wastage
The Issues: The leather industry frequently makes the top ten most polluting industry lists.
Salt is a major pollutant that is expelled from most tanneries. Many are mainly based in areas with cheap workforce and poor environmental protection, waste water is simply released into the freshwater river systems. The salinity decimates wildlife and fish stock down steam and the contaminated ground water renders farmland useless (recent research puts the current loss of global farmland due to salinization at 15,000 km2/ year, thats the size of Wales each year!).
Some countries such as China and India have tried to curb the pollution issues with legislation but have been unable to enforce them as alternative technologies had been ineffective or cost prohibiting. The Litehide™ process can help solve part of this problem forever by removing salt contamination from the equation. The Litehide™ solution provides tanners with a process that is both less damaging to the environment and more profitable whilst at the same time easy to adopt with minor changes to their current workflow.
Litehide™ simply provides a more profitable way for the leather industry to become more environmentally friendly.