Sustainability in process innovation: development of a green tanning process supported by LCA methodology

As a response to the growing concerns about a variety of environmental issues expressed by public opinion and political bodies, the leather industry needs to support its market by environmental criteria as a guarantee of quality. For this reason, assessment tools as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, which allow a more thorough knowledge of the products to the enterprises and can help to guide the environmental policies, are recommended (e.g. EC Directive on Ecologic Labels). The LCA methodology, described in details by the ISO 14000 series, allows the assessment of the environmental impacts due to products, processes, or services, by the identification of the inputs (e.g. energy and material consumption) and outputs (e.g. waste and pollutant production) streams exchanged by the process with the environment (i.e. from raw materials procurement to waste streams disposal). The application of LCA as tool for integration of sustainability aspects in process design and development is gaining wider acceptance and methodological development. In this study, the life cycle modeling was used to support the development of a novel tanning process based on the use of a new class of tanning agent produced from renewable resources (e.g. glucose). The experimental activity performed to investigate the technical feasibility of the innovative tanning cycle was supported by the modelling of the process using the LCA methodology in order to assess the environmental performance of the leather production cycle. Therefore, an LCA analysis was performed in order to compare the glucose-tannage process with the traditional one from an environmental point of view.