Hello, hello, welcome to an episode of what we're gonna be calling Leadersmith talks. Yes, that's a very original name. I thought of it myself. This is going to be an alternative to the traditional website blog posts.

I've been researching a lot of brands while we were making our own. And I noticed how most of the block posts are nothing but keyword spam. Nothing. It's just words to help them rank themselves in the search engine algorithm for Google or anything, but I thought it would be fun to change that concept a bit. Instead of a traditional blog post, I want to try and make a video log series or a podcast series. In which I talk about anything related to leather. Talk about leather care history, what interests me about it and what can be done with it and maybe in the future, we can incorporate some challenges and we can see where it goes.

Today, I wanted to talk about something I'm quite passionate about. And that is how leather relates to the environment. Leather and the environment. Often you’ll find artificial leather that's used in association with environmental activism and being environmentally friendly and environmentally conscious. That's not really the case, though. There's a lot more to this.

Yes, it's true that artificial leather products directly produce less emissions, then traditional leather, there's a lot more to the discussion. Most artificial leather products are what is called PU or polyurethane. Yes, artificial leather is quite literally plastic, you'll be shocked by how many people don't know about this. In fact, this might come as a shock to many of you. Artificial leather is plastic when PU leather is produced, it emits less pollution directly, but then the product that's made is also far far inferior to leather. It has a much shorter life compared to leather. Most PU items are actually made to last about 5 years or so, but oftentimes it barely meets that goal. Let me ask you, have you ever bought a product that you thought was leather? You maybe bought a jacket for one winter, wore it all winter and then, as spring and summer came, you put it in your closet. And then the next winter you take it out and you'll find that your jacket is peeling or sometimes, it's also covered in a shiny sticky substance that can't be wiped off. Well, that jacket was not made of leather that was made of you PU can go bad from not enough use but it can also go bad from excessive use.

A funny story with PU that happened to me personally. I was with my father, we were going for a business trip. So we landed in Dubai and as we were passing through security to reach our connecting flight. I noticed that there were some small black chunks behind my father, I didn't think much of it. We went through security and we're just walking to our gate at the airport and again I noticed there were more black chunks right behind them. I stopped him, looked at his shoe and the sole of his shoe, which was made of PU, was completely falling apart. Every step he took was leaving behind a small black chunk. That is because these shoes that he bought he'd bought probably a few months ago and then he kept them in his closet. Check them out for this trip and as a result, the oils in the PU had settled, and just became brittle and every step he took the soles just fell off. So we had to throw those shoes away. There was nothing that could be done for that at the time. And he had to buy new ones at the airport.

Leather, on the other hand, can last for years, decades or even centuries if cared for properly. It will easily last your entire life. People can go through their life with just one leather jacket and even that can be passed down later on.

Artificial leather, however, is the choice for fast fashion. It's a far cheaper alternative that encourages people to purchase more instead of buying one good quality leather jacket, one might choose to buy 3 or 4 artificial leather jackets in different colors. That way, they can have a jacket to match every single one of their outfits. But the problem is that inevitably, when that jacket expires, there will be 4 times the amount of waste that will end up in a landfill and yes, it will end up in a landfill. Artificial leather products do not decompose while they can theoretically be recycled, most people throw them away because they've expired. And after they expire, there's nothing that can be done. They'll just be tossed on a landfill and since it's made of plastic. It will just break down into microplastics and further pollute the environment.

Real leather, on the other hand, can completely decompose. If for whatever reason you want to throw away a leather jacket, you can remove the metal trims, the buttons, zipper or anything like that. Put the jacket in the ground and it will completely decompose. The metal can be recycled or the zippers can be attached onto other products. Chrome tanned leather or vegetable tanned leather can completely decompose. I'll have an episode talking about the difference between the two in the future.

And speaking of vegetable tender, that's actually one of the most environmentally friendly products you can buy. We also make our own vegetable tend ladder in our tannery and we use it in most of our products. We can use them for all of our products, but sometimes we prefer the touch of the chrome tanned ladder for certain products. And sometimes it's more appropriate to use Chrome tanned leather, but we can use vegetable tend for any of them. Even our Chrome tanned leather for that matter. It's very, very environmentally friendly.

Since our tannery is LWG gold rated, we have very strict environmental policies to ensure that there's very, very minimal. Emissions and damage to the environment from leather production. Unfortunately, greenwashing is very, very common in the fashion industry, and we really hope to bring some much needed change. There's a lot more that one can do rather than just planting a few trees. You should definitely be planting trees. But along with that, you need to take further steps.

We're not just going to leave our environmental messaging at LWG gold. No. All of our products are manufactured in-house with leather that we produce in-house. We are not drop shipping random generic products from random factories all over the world, slapping our label on it and shipping them to you. No, we're making everything in-house. The leather is made by us and then the products are made by us. There is no needless transportation of materials. That leads to cheaper prices for you, and also less emissions due to transport.

All the products we ship to our customers are also packed in a recyclable plastic cover, which is then placed into a recyclable cardboard box that's cut to shape depending on the items inside. Inside this. Not only minimizes the size of the parcel, leading to even lower shipping rates for you. It also removes all the unnecessary fancy packaging that most brands need to add to add value to their product for us. Our product is not its packaging. It's not anything, it's the leather we put a lot of thought and care into each and every product. We put a lot of thought into the leather that we use for that product. We especially make leather for that product. It's all about the leather and the finishing and the feeling of the product. Also with fancy packaging, it's unfortunate, but it's you, the customer who ends up paying for all of that, and this way we can just give you cheaper products.

In addition to all of this we just want. To promote the use of high quality items, that you can use for years and years and even pass down. We want to tackle the wasteful fashion industry. We do not keep any extra production of our products either. Excessive production leads to needless waste. For every item that we produce. We make one in each size, and we keep that as stock as we get an order for it, we dispatch that item and get a new one made. This way, we do not have any excess stock and no excess overproduction and needless emissions.

In addition to this, we also want to help you if you have anything made of leather, currently, and you just have questions on how to maintain it and how to make it last longer, please feel free to contact us. We will help you. We don't want anything we don't want any money for that we'll help you for free. We just want to promote what an amazing material leather is. And we just want to promote it to more people.

At the same time, we also want to tackle over consumption, if you have another product and you donated to charity and you provide us with proof that you've donated it. We will instantly give you a discount coupon for our store that can be used for any product.

Again, I'm only scratching the surface of this topic. There's so much more that we want to do and we need your help to do and if anyone would like to see your followers, please let me know.

I'll see you in the next episode, this has been your Leathersmith.