Sustainable Leather Sourcing
Having always been a very sustainably conscious brand, it is important for us to trace the origins of our leathers and how sustainable our tanneries are. We review each tannery’s sustainable credentials and whether they are part of Leather Working Group to give us a good guide on what standards are being kept.
Leather Working Group is a global multi-stakeholder initiative, founded in 2005, with over 2200 stakeholders internationally including tanneries, NGOs, suppliers, retailers, and auditors. LeatherWorking Group (LWG) was created to provide a global standard that assess the environmental performance of leather manufacturing operations. This enables tanneries that are doing a great job with responsible leather manufacturers to stand out and be certified against the LWG standard, which enables ethical brands like us to make better choices in our sourcing. The tanneries are rated on a specific list of criteria including social compliance, wastewater, effluent treatment, and waste management, water and energy consumption, recycling, environmental practices, and traceability of hides.
The Leather Manufacturers are scored based on the total volume of leather produced, all certified suppliers meet the environmental requirements set out by the long developed LWG Standard and some tanners continuingly improving can achieve a rating depending on their overall performance:
85% Gold
75% Silver
65% Bronze
50% Audited and certified against the LWG Standard
We are proud to say that all the tanneries we source from comply with the LWG standards (or their industry equivalent) and it is our pledge for the future, to continue sourcing leathers almost exclusively from LWG Certified Suppliers with a Silver or Gold rating and to be as transparent as possible in our approach to sustainability.
