Sustainability

Let’s talk about sustainability. 
We all know leather isn’t the most eco-friendly material, but we do feel as a small business we’re trying to do our part in reducing the environmental impact we have in other ways.

The debate around leather is a tricky one, but we think we can still provide products to consumers in a way that’s still sustainable. Our stuff is made to last with the very best materials, and we encourage people to ‘Buy Less, But Buy Well’.

It is important more now than ever to try and implement practices that enable us to take ownership of our own product’s life-cycle. Every manufacturer and every consumer needs to be aware of how their product is made, where it has come from and the environmental impact it has.

These are some of the steps we have taken so far:

REDUCING POWER/WATER USE IN MANUFACTURING

• We’ve converted the Eumundi Shop and Home Workshop to 100% Solar Power
• As we are small production and not mass-producing, we are running 1, maybe 2 sewing machines at any given time. Majority of our cutting is done by hand, or on a manual clicking press (lots of arm workouts)
• Our belts are cut, skived and finished all by hand
• We try to use very minimal water. Only a little bit is used for cleaning at the Shop. Sometimes for Wet-slicking but we try to re-cycle that as much as possible. All our water at the home workshop is from our Rain Tanks.  

PACKAGING/PLASTIC 

• Our price labels and packaging are all made from Paper/Cardboard and tied on with leather string offcuts or cotton/hemp string 
• We use Compostable Postage Bags (Hero Packaging) and Biodegradable Sticky Tape for our Mail Orders 
• Any materials/supplies we receive in plastic packaging we will try to re-use again. It can be for sorting out items in our workshop, or using them for selling small amounts of offcuts/leather supplies to fellow leather crafters. 
• We are currently working on finding more sustainable Ink alternatives for our stamps/pens (any suggestions would be appreciated) 
• We are also working on finding alternatives for our stickers 

 
OFFCUTS

If you’ve ever been to our workshop, you’ll understand that we don’t throw many offcuts away:

• It is our duty to not waste any part of the animal, so we try to re-use smaller pieces into patchwork/repairs/keyrings/smaller/zip toggles/small items etc
• We can use any pieces down to the size of a 5 cent coin. Anything smaller we package up to give away to jewellers/craft hobbyists 

 
KANGAROO LEATHER

If you’ve ever done any research about Kangaroo Skin, it is considered one of most sustainable leathers in the world. 
Only a small proportion of the total population is taken for the food industry, and the leather is a recycled by-product that would otherwise end up as waste.
Kangaroos are not farmed but harvested in the wild from a large, self-replenishing population. As a result no natural habitat is cleared for them. The harvest is strictly controlled by an Australian Government program that ensures no detrimental impact on the kangaroos or their ecosystems.
We source our Roo from Packer Leather Tannery in Brisbane, QLD. 
Packer Leather's Narangba facility makes use of a large solar power system that delivers significant reductions in the consumption of natural gas and release of CO2 in the atmosphere. Recycling and reuse are the cornerstones of their process engineering. Their water use policy has resulted in continuous recycling of at least 40% of the water used in the production process. Packer Leather manages restricted chemical compliance with an extensive testing program through independent and internationally certified and accredited facilities.
 
COWHIDE/BUFFALO LEATHER

Cowhide is considered the least eco-friendly of leathers. It is also one of the most durable and long-lasting so it’s a hard fence to sit on. As Kangaroo only comes to a maximum thickness of about 1.4mm and quite small skins, you have to use Cowhide/Buffalo for items such as Belts and more structured designs:

• We try not to source our Cowhide from countries known for their use of bad chemicals, poor treatment of workers and lack of health and safety regulations 
• Most of Cowhide is imported from Italy, who have been known for their quality of leather for 100s of years. We also source from Japan and a little from South America (Buffalo).
• We are working on sourcing Australian Tanned cowhide. There is a severe lack of Tanners still operational in Australia and the hides are usually a different quality to European leather due to the harshness of the outback. But we are still working on it 👍🏽

 
SHEEPSKIN/LAMBSKIN/GOAT

Most of the Leathergoods you will buy in the commercial shops will be from these leathers. It’s usually due to the softness and the price of it to buy. We do not use it as it tends to tear easily. We often get people coming in asking us for repairs on their jackets they’ve bought elsewhere, some only been purchased recently. When you’re spending $500+ on a leather jacket, the last thing you want is for it to get caught on something and rip. 
It is also quite porous and hard to get waterproof, as any liquid tends to absorb. 
We’ve specially obtained a certain Kangaroo leather that is just as soft, whilst being up to 30 times stronger than Sheep in the same thickness, and able to be made 100% waterproof with the right stitching. 
 
‘VEGAN LEATHER’

Although the thought of trying out ‘leather alternatives’ has crossed our minds, there’s no way we would be able to offer our 10 Year Warranty on our products, as that would take us another 10 years to test it. 
It is still a possibility in the future, but something we will have to fine tune and test before introducing into our business. We will only be looking into such materials as pineapple/cactus leather, and with as least amount of plastic infill as possible. 
As we feel like our products are built to last, and if you can have one of our items for a minimum of 10 years rather than a countless number of cheaper products in that time (that are probably going to sit in landfill), that surely is a better option for our customers for the time being. 
 
FITTINGS

We’ve tried and tested many fittings over the years, and will not use any again if they’ve proven to be bad quality. We believe in making things once, and making it well. When you’re putting your own time into creating something, why skimp out on cheap materials?

• Solid Brass/ Stainless Steel where we can. Sometimes certain sizes of buckles/hooks will not come in Brass or Steel, but we’ll test the alternatives out to our satisfaction. 
• Most of our Zips are manufactured in Sydney, NSW. YKK is a very reputable brand and known for their quality over the years. 

We’ve also teamed up with CarbonClick, a New Zealand company making it easy for people and businesses to help fight climate change.

CarbonClick looks like a green button at checkout. When you click it, a small contribution is added to your basket which purchases carbon offsets. These offsets reduce the environmental impact of the carbon emissions related to the purchase. CarbonClick’s offsets fund forest restoration, tree planting, and renewable energy projects around the world. We’re proud to be part of the fight against climate change.

We’ll be making our own contributions, and changing our practices to reduce our carbon footprint. We hope you’ll join us in creating a sustainable future, by choosing to CarbonClick with your purchase.