Atelier Verdi powder pink Livia vanity cases

Leather Sustainability

Atelier Verdi powder pink Livia vanity cases

As the world becomes ever more socially aware and strives for deeper sustainability and social responsibility, the luxury fashion industry has a big role to play.

For us at Atelier Verdi, supply-chain transparency is a critical part of the puzzle and none more so than the key ingredient in our collections; leather.

We’ve highlighted our ethical leather credentials before, about how animal welfare is paramount, where processing is sympathetic to the environment and how all of our leathers are derived exclusively as a by-product of food production. https://atelierverdi.com/blogs/our-passions/ethical-leather

But here we want to delve a little deeper into the details, to offer our clients an added layer of assurance.

Our tannery sources the hides that we use from Italy, France and New Zealand, where animal welfare standards are high, and where we can ensure that farming is on land that hasn’t been exploited for grazing and the animals haven’t been intensively farmed.

As a certified member of the Leather Working Group (LWG), our tannery is audited and assessed according to strict protocols. LWG is a non-profit organisation responsible for the world’s leading environmental certification for the leather industry.

The tanning process itself is another source of contention, and it’s here that new technology is playing its part. 

Super-efficient water filters ensure that more and more water can be recycled, while the filtered remnants are reworked to produce products such as insulation or materials for building and road construction. 

Fresh leather scraps are collected, processed and returned to the earth as fertilizers while other residues are recovered and returned back into the tanning production cycle for reuse.

At Atelier Verdi we’ve made a conscious decision to keep working with cow hides, as we believe that by using hides that would otherwise be simply discarded from the food industry, we can put them to good use. Vegan leathers are derived from oil-based products so at the moment we prefer to stay the course we’re on, but we’re keenly watching advances in new leather alternatives.

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