The China Leather Industry Association (CLIA) has taken an active part in the compilation of a new genuine leather mark. The Eco-leather Standards of Genuine Leather Mark has been designed to inspire environmental protection in the Chinese leather industry and ease their transition into the WTO.
When the CLIA registered the trademark of ‘Genuine Leather Mark (GLM)’ with the National Industry and Commercial Bureau in 1993, the products marked with the GLM had to be ‘green’ and include environmental protection. The rules for the implementation of the Genuine Leather Mark were discussed in several leather conferences from 1996 to 1999. In 1998, officials from the United Nations spoke highly of the CLIA’s introduction of the GLM and eco-leather at the symposium on environmental protection technology sponsored by the United Nations in Beijing. In 2000, Zhang Shuhua, vice-president of the CLIA, gave a lecture on the Engineering of GLM and Eco-leather at the international environmental protection meeting held by the Industry and Development Organisation of the United Nations in Morocco and won high praises from the representatives. The CLIA formally released guidelines for the implementation of the GLM at the federal annual meeting of four special commissions held in Beijing in July 2001, and also issued them to the Chinese leather industry at the same time. The CLIA has also arranged for a number of tanneries to discuss the matter again in Shanghai this September.
The Eco-leather Standards of Genuine Leather Mark was drafted out in October 2001, and more than ten leather specialists from nine leather schools and institutes discussed this draft standard during the first China leather conference of science and technology of the new century held at Sichuan University in 2001. It is hoped that the GLM will accelerate China’s transfer from a mass-producing leather country to a modern leather producing country, and will be positive in establishing a new image for the Chinese leather industry.
Included in this standard, except for some common chemical and physical parameters, are regulated limits of some toxic chemical substances that may be found in leather, such as hexavalent chromium, azo dyestuffs that can lead to cancer, free formaldehyde and PCPs.
The CLIA has consulted with many testing institutes in China and abroad, and more than 60 kinds of leather samples from 43 domestic tanneries were collected subsequently and tested by a Chinese institute. The regulations of this standard will be the same as importers’ requirements in developed countries such as Germany and other EU countries.
