An international coalition of organisations has launched a new campaign called Make the Label Count (MTLC), writes Leatherbiz.

At its launch event in Brussels in October, MTLC warned that methodology the European Commission is using to come up with a system for applying product environmental footprint (PEF) labels to consumer goods was incomplete.

In more recent comments, MTLC said fast fashion is unsustainable and that if the industry is to end the overproduction of consumer goods, it will be necessary to steer the public towards products that have “long service lives”.

This ought to open doors for a material that offers as much longevity and recyclability as leather, but the secretary of the International Council of Tanners, Dr Kerry Senior, MTLC was “absolutely correct” and he warned there was a danger the PEF labelling system the European Commission comes up with could do “more harm than good”.

He said all of the sustainability metrics and labels that are currently in use and informing the European Commission’s work have “the same limitations”.

“This matters,” Dr Senior continued, “because the positive benefits of natural fibres like leather are always overlooked, while their negative impact relative to synthetics is overstated. Systems that push manufacturing towards fossil-fuel based synthetics cannot be the answer.”