THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF LEATHER: A COMPREHENSIVE REASSESSMENT USING GLOBAL LIVESTOCK DATA AND META-ANALYSIS
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Product designers and manufacturers lack robust and regionally representative information on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their leather textiles. In this analysis, we present a meta-analysis of life-cycle assessments (LCAs) of bovine leather and some increasingly common non-animal-based or “vegan” alternatives, disaggregated in two broad phases: (1) farming and (2) tanning and finishing. Due to limitations in these data, we also present a novel globally- and regionally-representative “top-down” method for allocating farming-phase GHG footprints of leather production using livestock production data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and comprehensive economic allocation data from literature. Our revised analysis produced a globally representative carbon footprint value of 142.1 (110.04 – 172.34 interquartile range) kg CO2 eq/kg finished leather for the farming phase, with regional variations ranging from 65.0 kg CO2 eq/kg finished leather in Eastern Europe to 228.4 kg CO2 eq/kg finished leather in Central and South America. Our top-down global estimate of leather emissions from farming is more than twice as high as that of prior life-cycle analyses (62.39 (41.36 – 81.54 IQR) kg CO2 eq/kg finished leather). We estimate an additional 48.1 (8.02 – 54.44 IQR) kg CO2 eq/kg finished leather for the tanning phase, which is heavily influenced by regional energy mix, for a revised combined GHG footprint of 190.2 kg CO2 eq/kg finished bovine leather. Vegan leather production demonstrates substantially lower emissions, averaging 14.9 (10.19 – 19.47 IQR) kg CO2 eq/kg finished vegan leather, or approximately 8% of the bovine leather global average. Despite some remaining limitations, this analysis provides the most comprehensive, globally- and regionally-representative estimates to date for the carbon footprint of leather products.