Eco leather» - a false term seeks a market

Unfortunately, ecology and environmental sustainability are quite often abused as marketing instruments. Terms are invented without the slightest technical or scientific basis. As a result, terms such «eco leather» and «bio leather» are used in leather marketing although no definitions as such exist for them. Nor have the International Council of Tanners ICT or the Union of International Tanning Chemists Associations IULTCS yet established criteria for defining the term «eco leather». For this, a comprehensive analysis of environmentally relevant criteria is necessary. The idea of distributing vegetable tanned leathers is certainly an important step. From today’s perspective, however, it will never be possible to completely replace chrome tanning since there are not enough sustainable vegetable tanning agents available world-wide.