Adopting standards and certification systems helps the leather industry to ensure compliance with relevant criteria and acknowledge good industry practice.
Different standards and certification systems significantly vary in terms of their requirements, approach to assurance-ranging from self-declaration to third-party audits-and the degree of traceability and oversight throughout the supply chain. Some are only active in certain regions or markets and others focus on particular impact areas.
For leather, most standards cover the processing stage. While there are multiple standards covering animal welfare for meat production, only a very few small supply chains currently manage to maintain traceability of the hides of certified animals through to finished leather goods. Aside from animal welfare concerns, the need for brands to know whether leather originates from land where deforestation takes place brings the necessity of joined up and certified supply chains to the fore.
The Leather Working Group (LWG)
The Leather Working Group (LWG), formed in 2005, is a multi-stakeholder group with over 1800 members that offers a suite of auditing tools to access the environmental performance of the leather manufacturing facilities and certifies those that meet its standards. In 2022, approximately 4.7 billion square feet of wet blue leather and around 9.5 billion square feet of finished leather were produced in the 1,103 leather production facilities audited by LWG. The market share of LWG leather increased from around 29% of global total finished leather production in 2021 to 39% in 2022.
Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (SEDEX)
Sedex is the trusted partner for ESG and responsible business. Our leading technology platform, insights, and services make it simpler for businesses to manage and improve environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and meet their sustainable supply chain goals. The world’s most widely used social audit, SMETA is designed to empower businesses like yours to conduct comprehensive evaluations of their suppliers. This guide will help you understand how it can help your business drive sustainability.
Sustainable Leather Foundation (SLF)
A global foundation for the benefit of all stakeholders in the leather industry, the focus of the Sustainable Leather Foundation is to provide a certification program; education; best practice; cohesive collaboration and global action. At the heart of the foundation is the SLF Transparency Dashboard™ and integrated web platform, linked to a certification standard that assesses new, or records existing, conformance and performance of leather manufacturers and associated facilities, against the three pillars of sustainability; Environmental, Social and Governance. By providing a consumer accessible window to sustainability performance, alongside fully transparent, detailed, data for the value chain partners, the Foundation can independently foster better collaboration, better solutions and better outcomes for people, planet and profit.
Global market share of the Leather Working Group (LWG)
(% of global finished leather in 2022)
| 39% LWG | 61% Conventional |
Source: Textile Exchange based on the Leather Working Group (LWG)
Leather & Footwear HIVE|Q1|2024
