An Environmental Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

The production of leather is intimately connected to meat and dairy and the cruelty inherent in those industries. That said, leather is sometimes touted as an eco-friendly material, but this is far from the truth. Bonnie Toye discusses the terrible environmental impact of the leather industry as well as its devastating toll on human lives and communities.

Leather’s Environmental Lie
From Bonnie Toye, GentleWorld.org
July 2025

Photo: Christian Faesecke / We Animals ~ A contributory to the River Buriganga in Hazaribagh, Dhaka, is littered with rubbish and the remains of leather. According to various sources, Hazaribagh has been ranked as one of the most polluted areas in the world. The city is home to a large number of tanneries, whose waste and effluent are linked to the city's severe pollution problems.

Leather is often marketed as a “natural” product, suggesting sustainability and timeless quality. But contrary to what many people believe, leather is anything but environmentally friendly. Rather, it is one of the most ecologically destructive materials in the fashion and manufacturing industries, built on a foundation of animal exploitation and environmental degradation.

In fact, due to tighter regulations and higher costs in developed nations, much of the industry operates in developing countries (such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Brazil, and Morocco) where laws are more lax and labor is cheaper. This outsourcing leads to contaminated waterways, and other ecological damage, along with health risks for workers, while global demand for leather goods continues driving the cycle.

Economically, leather production is not merely a negligible “byproduct” of meat and dairy farming but an economically valuable co-product that enhances the overall profitability of these environmentally reckless industries. While animals aren’t generally raised exclusively for leather, their hides represent a crucial revenue stream for producers, adding economic utility to what would otherwise be a massive waste disposal challenge for the animal industry.

The global leather market is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, signifying substantial revenue streams throughout the supply chain that directly benefit the animal agriculture sector. This symbiotic relationship underscores the integral role of leather production in the larger economic ecosystem of the animal trade.

In short, despite widespread greenwashing, the truth is that leather’s environmental cost is enormous and inextricably tied to the harms of animal agriculture.

Skins soak in dye pools at the Chouara Tannery in Fes, Morocco. Vanessa Garrison / We Animals

Water Use

Every stage of leather creation demands a significant water footprint: from the vast amounts needed to irrigate the crops that sustain the animals themselves, to the direct hydration required throughout their lives, and finally, to the numerous soaking, cleaning, and chemical-laden baths involved in processing raw hides into finished leather.

This cumulative demand is staggering. Consider that it takes an estimated 17,000 liters of water to make just one leather handbag. This figure isn’t merely about the water running through a tannery; it accounts for the entire journey, primarily driven by the resource-heavy nature of animal agriculture. Such colossal consumption highlights how this industry places immense pressure on freshwater supplies, often in regions already facing water scarcity.

Waste water, red with dye, flows into an open drain in Hazaribagh, in western Dhaka, Bangladesh. Christian Faesecke / We Animals

Toxic Tanneries

Next, we have the tanning process leather undergoes. This process is toxic, polluting, and inhumane for various reasons. Leather doesn’t come off an animal ready to wear. It must be preserved to prevent it from rotting. But the most common method, chrome tanning, uses toxic heavy metals and chemicals that are incredibly harmful to the environment. The result?

Air Pollution and Solid Waste: The tanning process emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and produces hazardous solid waste as well. These chemicals poison the air and contribute to the global pollution burden, especially in impoverished areas where workers and residents suffer the consequences.

Toxic Wastewater: Tanneries produce massive amounts of chemically contaminated wastewater, potentially laced with carcinogenic chromium, lead, arsenic and acids. In countries with lax regulations, where much of the world’s leather is produced, this waste flows directly into rivers and groundwater, polluting ecosystems and harming communities. As is so often the case, it is those in developing countries who pay the price for the world’s dependence on leather.

Rivers near tannery clusters (like the Buriganga in Bangladesh or the Ganges in India) are heavily polluted, harming aquatic life and agriculture. While this physical pollution happens locally, the demand comes from the global automotive, furniture, and fashion industries.

Tannery workers can include children as young as eight years old in some countries, and they are at risk of developing severe illnesses from exposure to these substances, including irritation to the airways and eyes; skin reactions; digestive problems, kidney or liver damage; long-term reproductive problems, and even cancers. (This is not to mention the fact that these children have also been observed using heavy machinery and dangerous equipment to cut the material that will eventually be made into shoes, belts, and bags to be worn by consumers in the West.)

Climate Change

Raising animals for food and leather, especially cows, directly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Cows emit vast quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas with 80 times the warming power of CO2 over a 20-year period. It is for this reason that animal agriculture’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is comparable to that of the entire global transportation sector.

As if that weren’t bad enough, then we have the ample amount of land use and deforestation that occurs for animal farming. Forests are clear-cut—often illegally—to create grazing land or to grow soy feed for farmed animals. Due to this, leather production is directly linked to deforestation, endangering biodiversity, and accelerating climate change.

In stark contrast, modern plant-based leathers, such as those derived from pineapple leaves, apple peels, or grape pomace, repurpose waste products from existing agricultural operations. Materials like mushroom (mycelium) leather can be grown in highly efficient, often vertical, indoor systems on agricultural byproducts, while cactus leather can thrive on arid land unsuitable for other crops. This allows plant-based alternatives to dramatically reduce the land demands associated with material production.

Cows in the Corryong area, Australia, 2020. Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

The Exploitation Mindset

Even allegedly “sustainable” leather, or so-called “eco-leather” or even “vegetable-tanned” leather, still relies on the slaughter of animals and the resource-intensive process that goes with raising them. These supposedly “eco-friendly” alternatives may not have the same chemical impact, but they still support massive water and land use, methane emissions, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.

This environmental harm and the lack of regard for the impact on human workers is not separate from the exploitation of animals. They are symptoms of the same system that views other living beings and the natural world as resources to extract, use, and discard as it suits.

So you see, there is no version of animal leather that is truly sustainable, and what comes along with it is direct and unnecessary cruelty for our fellow sentient beings. It’s imperative that we question not just the methods of production, but the underlying assumption that our fellow animals, and the Earth itself, are here for us to use.

What can we do?

The environmental crisis we face today is not just about emissions or waste. It’s about a mindset that permits the exploitation of life for profit and convenience. Leather, as a product of violence against animals and ecosystems alike, has no place in a truly sustainable future. Environmentalism must go beyond recycling bins and carbon offsets. It must confront the foundational systems, like animal agriculture, that are driving our planetary collapse.

Refusing leather is just one act among many that allows us to build a world rooted in justice and respect for all living beings. Hopefully then, we will be one educated step further toward a truly sustainable world.

Creating change from the consumer side

Choosing vegan leather doesn’t mean choosing plastic. It means choosing innovation and rejecting systems built on violence and destruction, not only toward nonhuman animals but toward the environment in its entirety.

The market already recognizes the need for leather alternatives, and it’s possible to find shoes, bags, and belts in traditional natural materials such as organic cotton, natural rubber, cork, and even bamboo, as well as exciting new materials such as leathers made from mushrooms, fruits, and even cactus. The more we demonstrate demand, the more we’ll see truly ethical and ecological choices becoming available.

Sources

https://www.collectivefashionjustice.org/water
https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: July 28, 2025
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