“Sorry, I’m looking for natural leather, chemical-free please. I would like to say that it is ecological, may I? I would like to use it for my next collection. Today people are looking for ecological products.”
Who of us has not heard words like these? With this farce of ecological, totally natural and “zero environmental impact” products, vegetable tanners are now very trendy. We also have the honour of having in our district “the only ecological tannery in the world”, or maybe there are a couple of them in the whole world…
Please, be serious!
We pay attention to words
The Genuine Italian Vegetable Tanned Leather Consortium manages the promotion of our leather, through communication activities. And communication is built with extremely important bricks, that we can’t use superficially or misleadingly: words. Words express, explain, bring together and are sticked in the mind of those people who can still think and remember; verba (non) volant. It’s from what is said or promised that we shall judge the fairness and the quality of a person or a message. Recanting or denying – sometimes even in front of the evidence – always involves a large or small loss of credibility. It’s much better to apologize and to take full responsibility of our deed.
We don’t have the coherence of stylites (not stylists) because maybe it is not of this world. But we think that “producing and/or consuming with no environmental impact” is the most hypocrital guarantee that a misinformed and hysterical market can pretend. Going after this litany is just a role-playing that will lead us to nothing but creating confusion, disinformation and intolerant behaviours in the relationship between producers and consumers.
We always state clear that our artisan companies are carrying forward the principle of “consuming less but consuming better“, because consumption determines production. We always repeat that our small artisan workshops don’t sell miracles, but they make – unlike most of the foreign tanneries – a high-quality product, in accordance with Italian laws concerning environmental impact, health and safety of employees in the workplace, without any need to sign further ethical specifications (rules already guaranteed by our State laws).
Maybe, given the scandals of recent years, we would be better ask some big brand customers to assure us how and who will use our leather, if only to prevent our brand damage…
There is no solution that makes zero impact on the environment, don’t fool ourselves!
