The costs and impacts of raising livestock, including with the purpose of leather, are tremendous in terms of the environment. The food, pastureland, water, and fossil fuel required to raise livestock are all the causes to the high pollution and costs to the environment in farming industries, especially those designated to fulfill leather industrial needs. According to PETA, animals on industrial factory farms, especially leather industries, “produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population.” The chemical pollution that resulted from mineral salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, oils, dyes, and cyanide has also brought serious impacts to the environment. Through the process of tanning, the chemicals being used would stabilize the collagen in animal skin to make it not biodegradable. This undermines the attempt to reuse leather products in environmental impacts due to its lack of biodegradability.

Around the world, the influence of leather products cannot be underestimated, as there are 24 billion meter squared of area dedicated for the production of leather on Earth, taking into account the deforested areas that were either used to produce leather or were chemically damaged by waste pollution. The contamination of leather production is not only limited to chemical by products but also the byproducts of animals, including skin trims, hair, wastes, keratin wastes, etc. On average, there are more than 1.4 billion cows, sheep, or goats, and many other kinds of animals, that were killed each year for Leather, and there are 2.29 million of other animals like buffaloes, pigs, and others, that were also killed for their skin. The byproduct of this vast amount could be catastrophic.

Cattle Stock Population the above image represents the number of Cattles farmed for commercial purposes

However, these issues will be solved by our leather product. The aim of our project is to replace the unsustainable traditional leather industry, and bring a new era of more efficient, sustainable, and qualitative leather production. Under the condition of producing the same amount of leather product, our project would decrease the waste by-products produced to a great extent. In the United States, 70% of the water pollution came from the leather industries, and this data is not only limited to the states. However, in the production process of our leather, the use of water will be minimized.

The consumption of leather requires sustainability, complete elimination of potential toxic chemical exposure, the presence of renewable energy, and all factors that contributed to the welfare of the environment and the individual. Therefore, the resources used have to be reconsidered to make sure the efficient use of natural resources. However, in modern leather industries, the amount of CO2 released is tremendous, reaching a 15,190 Kg of CO2 for every 100 m2.

Evolution of global population and global CO2 emission since 1900

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is Responsible Consumption and Production, and one of our project’s aims is to achieve the same level of requirement and goals. To reduce the toxic impact brought by leather industries, we developed leather that is produced from yeast and E. coli, which are sustainable. In fact, Cow-derived leather has almost three times the negative environmental impact as its synthetic counterparts, which is what we developed. They are not only edible but would have the minimal potential chemical harm to the users of our product. We would be able to reduce the waste product from the production process to 1% compared to the previous wasted used. According to amberoot.com, the animal skin consists 10% of the whole animal’s value, which means that the real production process wastes almost 90% of the animal produce, despite the plans that were given in recycling the animal meat into factory farms. However, we would eliminate the devastation to animals by using the Bacterial Cellulose membrane our team produced. The production efficiency would largely increase as the time required greatly decrease.

Water pollution as a result of the tanning of leather

The goal of the United Nations was not to just promote sustainable production and consumption but to also enforce the overall awareness of leather farms and the consumer market. Our project would make this improvement a lot easier in the leather market.

The impacts of leather are of course not only limited to the chemical waste produce, but also the destruction to animals that had their skin used for industrial and consumer purposes, which is one of the SDGs “Life on Land.” Around the globe, there are 290 million cows that were used as leather products for consumerism, and is predicted to reach 430 million in 2025 if there were no intersection or intervention to revolutionize this issue. However, our project can solve this problem. Not only that in the production process of our project, there would not be the slightest involvement of animal but instead would only be the coculture of Kombucha, or Komagataeibacter, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, forming Bacterial Cellulose Membrane. The facility of the whole production process would be different but much more sustainable, since it only requires, in the simplified way, the involvement of tea, a container, and sugar. We will be able to produce a sheet the size of a lamb from only 10L of Kombucha, which would largely increase the production line efficiency in the working process.

This SDG was specifically designated to save the flora and fauna lives on land, which includes the protection of forests. However, the global area that has been used for leather production has already reached 1/10 of the worlds’ total surface area, and it is yet increasing. The ecosystems that were pioneer to the area would experience high and irreversible land degradation, and even biodiversity loss due to the deforestation and exploitation of animal resources by humans. The leather industry also hugely contributed to global warming in a negative sense, provided that the meat, dairy, and leather production specifically accounts for around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The water pollution is also devastating, and makes up a high percentage of the global water pollution total. However, with the adoption of our project, these problems would be disentangled naturally without significant obstacles. Our project has the minimum costs but produce the greatest benefits, and with the sustainability of our product, it would indeed be revolutionary for the entire market of leather industry.