For more than 150 years, chrome-tanning, has been the most wideused process to produce leather. Today 90 percent of the world's leather production is tanned with chromium despite it's wellknown cause risks to human health and danger to the environment.
In fact, Blacksmith Institute has placed chrome-tanning on its Top 10 Toxic Pollution Problems due to chromium contamination and high chemical oxygen demand as typical problems associated with tannery effluents, both of which can pose serious risks to the environment.
Because the process of tanning creates wastewater, the environmental footprint after the tanning process is of essence. According to research made by the Department of Environmental Sciences at Jahangirnagar University all wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous to the environment.
Leather for the production of a typical leather briefcase creates about 1000 to 4000 liters of wastewater. One can do the environmental math by using statistics from the World Bank Group that have reported that wastewater from chrome-tanning includes chromium levels of 100–400 mg/l, sulfide levels of 200–800 mg/l, high levels of fat and other solid wastes, and notable pathogen contamination.
Chromium is bad. That’s why Vakigrad in our effort to meet our principle about cleaner materials has worked with an Italian tannery to develop a vegetable tanned leather for our leather goods.
