Leather products are made from animal skins. To turn the skin into leather, a process called tanning is required. Simply put, the skin of a living creature will naturally deteriorate through rotting and hardening, but tanning prevents this and processes it into a material that can be used in products.
When you think about it, leather products have been with humans since the primitive times when we first started hunting. It's amazing to think that even back then we had the ingenuity to make leather that doesn't rot or harden, which goes against the laws of nature.
As time went on, tanning technology evolved as well. Chrome tanning, which uses chrome ore, was developed with the expansion of the leather industry. It is cheaper and can be mass-produced than traditional tanning methods, and has many advantages over traditional methods, such as better color development and less discoloration, ability to maintain the elasticity of the leather, and versatility to produce a wide range of leathers from soft to hard. It quickly spread around the world and became widely used.
This method has greatly contributed to the expansion of leather product production, but in recent years, environmental pollution caused by chromium has become a concern. Chromium itself is not toxic, so there is no problem with the safety of the product itself.
However, because heavy metals contained in industrial wastewater can lead to environmental damage, wastewater regulations have now been strengthened. In addition, it has been found that serious health problems have also been observed among factory workers, so there is a trend to reduce the use of such materials.
As chrome tanning is scaled back, traditional tanning methods are being re-evaluated. For example, "tannin tanning," which uses tannins extracted from plants, is attracting attention from the perspective of environmental protection as being "fully vegetable." Other traditional methods, such as "aluminum tanning" using alum and tanning using "aldehydes," are also being re-evaluated. However, each tanning method has its pros and cons, and none of them is as convenient as chrome, which has a wide range of options for color development, leather flexibility, and durability, so better methods are being tried and tested every day.
Leather products have been supporting our lives since the beginning of time. Borrowing the wisdom of our predecessors and adding new ideas, the leather industry is working towards further development, overcoming the hurdle of environmental issues.
