A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION | Continued
Over a year ago in Greenpeace published a report called Slaughtering the Amazon. In this report, they linked Amazonian deforestation “to many reputable global brands and retailers, including a long list of international Blue Chip companies.” China produces more leather garments and footwear than any other country, followed by India and Italy, but these countries do not produce enough hides to meet their huge share of the leather goods market and have to import from other countries. The USA and Brazil supply a high quantity of hides for production in other countries. About half of leather production globally is for shoes according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO 2008), 60% of which can be traced back to China, which imports leather from Brazil.
deforestation instead of turning a blind eye. Individuals need to put pressure on government to regulate suppliers and purchase leather products only from ethical sources. In response to the Greenpeace report, beef and leather buyers announced they would no longer buy cattle products unless the industry could prove it was improving and becoming more transparent. In 2010, the Leather Working Group developed a new traceability system to ensure that leather products from Brazil don’t result in deforestation, ensuring companies can trace the materials in their supply chains back to the meat packing plants where leather originates from.
According to Greenpeace, the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is responsible for 14% of the world’s annual deforestation and currently one hectare of Amazon rainforest has been lost to cattle ranchers every 18 seconds.
The Leather Working Group is a group of brands, retailers, product manufacturers, leather manufacturers, chemical suppliers and technical experts that work together to develop an environmental stewardship protocol specifically for the leather manufacturing industry. It is made up of representative parties from different areas of the product supply chain including major footwear brands, tanners, technical experts and other industry representatives and members include Adidas, H & M, Nike, Puma, New Balance, Clarks, Timberland, K Swiss, Nine West, Dr. Martens, Marks & Spencer, and many more.
Italy is often considered the source of high fashion, quality leather goods and is the world’s second largest shoe exporter in terms of value. Leading Italy’s leather export industry are their handbag lines, which account for nearly two thirds of the trade value of Italian leather goods (MIPEL, 2008). In 2009, Greenpeace reported that the two leading Italian leather processors which create products for Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada among others, source their leather in part from the Amazon.
Major shoe companies Adidas, Nike, Clarks, Geox and Timberland have all committed not to buy leather from Amazon destruction, prompting the recent decision by Bertin, one of the world’s largest leather exporters, to commit to stop sourcing cattle from newly deforested areas and implement a traceability system to ensure the sourcing. Bertin will register and map all farms that directly supply cattle to the company.
Supply chains must be made transparent in order to solve this problem. Large retailers and clothing manufacturers must take action, consciously sourcing raw materials from ranchers and supplier companies not engaged in Amazon
For the rest of the supply chain, including rearing and nursery farms, it will implement a traceability system from farms to its slaughterhouses and processing facilities by 2011. They will also ensure that they don’t buy cattle from indigenous and protected areas or from farms linked to slave labor, land conflicts and land grabbing.
The new protocol requires meat packers certify that all their direct suppliers have registered their farms by late 2010, providing GPS coordinates of their holdings.