Even though many people are against the leather industry for ethical reasons regarding the animals, they don’t realize that the environment is being harmed as well.

Animal skin used to be salt-dried and tanned with vegetable oil to become leather. These days, leather is made with more dangerous substances, including formaldehyde, dyes, and cyanide-based finishes. Leather is tanned with chromium—a substance that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers hazardous. These chrome-tanning facilities waste about 15,000 gallons of water and produces about 3,000 pounds of waste from the animals. The annual 800,000 tons of chrome shavings end up in landfills.

The land around the tanneries are the areas most affected by leather production, as the groundwater contains elevated levels of toxic substances. The same contaminated land is sometimes used for agricultural purposes. In India, a total o 16,000 hectares of agricultural land was polluted by 500 different tanneries. This shows how leather production directly harms the land and environment through toxic waste.

This is a really interesting topic that ultimately begs the question: in what ways do industrial practices and factories in general harm the planet? What can we do about it? How can the large amounts of waste they generate be reduced? What government regulations should be implemented to control them? I would be curious to hear more discussion.

Great work Tori! I really liked how you compared the leather industry in the past to the leather industry of today. It seems that production of nearly all things has increased in efficiency since the dawn of time, but this efficiency has led to dire consequences on the environment. In the agriculture industry, harmful pesticides are constantly being sprayed upon crops; these pesticides can harm the wildlife life around the farm and industry. This topic brings up the question, "When do consequences outweigh efficiency?"