The Swedish tanneries are following the European chemical legislation called REACH. Tanneries are using many different chemicals during leather manufacturing. It would have been possible to produce 86.4 million pairs of shoes or 1.6 million sofas from the hides that were wasted in USA during 2020. Leather has often been replaced by different synthetic materials (mostly plastic based on oil). These hides were instead either destroyed by burning or discarded in landfills.
During 2019, 5.5 million hides were wasted in USA and in 2020 around 4.8 million hides were wasted in USA instead of going to leather production. As a consequence, hides have been landfilled in USA and Australia instead of being used for leather production. The demand for leather has decreased during the last years while the consumption of meat globally not has decreased. The study is based on data from 1995 – 2019 and shows that the number of animals that are slaughtered was not affected by the price of the hides meaning that the number of slaughtered animals is not increased even if the price for hides is increasing. The value of hides/skins corresponds to only a minor part of the value of the animal (usually 1 – 3 %) and has even decreased during the last years.Ī new scientific publication from USA was published in 2021. No, hides and skins are a by-product from the meat industry and the availability of hides and skins are decided by the meat consumption. However, the tanneries in Sweden have managed rather well during the last 20 years and the number of tanneries has not changed although some tanneries have been restructured during this period.
In addition, the labour costs increased substantially while a major part of the import of leather was low-cost leather from Asia. Other reasons for the decline were more stringent environmental demands on the tanneries. A major reason was that the Swedish shoe industry had a major crisis and several major shoe factories using Swedish leather were closed down.
The major reduction for the tanning industry in Sweden happened after the 2 nd World War and depended on several factors. Despite this, there were more than 100 tanneries in Sweden in the beginning of the 20 th Century. During this time, the tanneries were developed from being craftmanship to industries and as a result the number of tanneries were reduced. The Swedish tanning industry was an important industrial sector at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20 th Century.
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