Leather Tannery Chemicals

The scientific article below shows visual aids that help explain the steps included in the leather production and chemicals that are used in the process. It also shows a graph in section B. the main country that contributes to the increase in leather tanneries in Europe. The graph shows Italy accounting for 62% of leather tanneries in the country while Europe only ceases at 38%. It raises concern that Italy is producing significantly more leather than any other country in Europe, making them accountable for the emission of chemicals associated with leather production. It would be sufficient for the project and  environmental advocates to target countries like Italy that are producing mass amounts of leather doubling the number of the thirteen countries combined in Europe.

Chemical and biological treatment technologies for leather tannery chemicals and wastewaters: A review

•                                                                                                            
•                       Giusy Lofrano፣ Sureyya Meriç^b, 
• Gülsüm Emel Zengin^c, 
• Derin Orhon^c

• ^a Department of Environment, Waste Division, Salerno Province, via Mauri, 61–84132 Salerno, Italy
• ^b Namık Kemal University, Çorlu Engineering Faculty, Environmental Engineering Department, Çorlu, Tekirdağ, Turkey
• ^c İstanbul Technical University, Civil Engineering Faculty, Environmental Engineering Department, Maslak, 34669 Istanbul, Turkey

Leather tanning is a wide common industry all over the world. It is known to be one of the most important industries in Mediterranean countries (Insel et al., 2009 and Mannucci et al., 2010). Because of their complex wastewater characteristics leather tanneries are generally located in so called organized industrial districts. In Italy tanneries, represented by about 1400 tanneries, are sited in four main poles: Veneto, Toscana, Lombardia and Campania regions (Fig. 1a); they transform raw or wet-blue skins into products used for various purposes. The value of production weighs for 17% of worldwide production and for 62% considering only the European Union. In terms of trade, it has been calculated that nearly one out of three skins traded between international operators is of Italian origin (UNIC, 2013). A proportional distribution of e leather tanneries in Italy and in EU countries is shown in Fig. 1b.

 Tanneries represent an important economic field also in developing countries as in the cases of Turkey, China, India, Pakistan Brazil and Ethiopia (Orhon et al., 1999, Leta et al., 2004, Lefebvre et al., 2006 and Banu and Kaliappan, 2007).