Leather Industry Is Not A Highly Polluting Industry.

Recently, Li Yuzhong, vice-chairman of the China Leather Association, said in an interview with reporters that it is not accurate to locate the leather industry as a high polluting industry in general.

Five reasons to refute the "pollution theory"

Li Yuzhong put forward five reasons to support his view.

One reason: "chromium pollution" has been seriously misinterpreted.

Li Yuzhong said that the main reason for the so-called tannery pollution is the trivalent chromium contained in its waste water. It is considered that chromium is a carcinogen, and "chromium pollution" has become a proper term in the leather industry.

This is the biggest mistake. Trivalent chromium is an indispensable element of the human body, just as the body needs sodium, potassium, zinc and calcium.

According to Li Yuzhong's statement, the reporter has checked some information specially.

Wang Quanjie, a professor and doctoral tutor of Yantai University, has put forward the same view.

He has written that over the past hundred years people have not found a clinical case of trivalent chromium carcinogenesis. Even the most demanding German environment has been publicly named for trivalent chromium. Germany's "labor health and labor protection central bulletin" clearly pointed out that trivalent chromium compounds are not carcinogens, nor are they the focus of disease, and can not cause skin lesions.

Trivalent chromium is a key element in the metabolism of sugar and fat and the normal function of insulin. Lack of trivalent chromium is one of the causes of diabetes.

Wang Quanjie thinks that trivalent chromium is beneficial to human body. Why is it that people always call it pollution? It is mainly to distinguish between trivalent chromium and six valent chromium, and to extend the harm of six valent chromium to trivalent chromium, so that it can be wronged.

Reason two: Leather pollution is no more serious than other industries.

Li Yuzhong said that industrial production is bound to generate pollution, so that cars and food are polluted.

Statistics show that China's leather industry pollution emissions accounted for only 1% of the total industrial wastewater emissions, while the total output value of leather accounted for 5% of the total industrial output value of the country, and the amount of foreign exchange earned accounted for 4% of the whole country. In this sense, the social benefits of 4%~5% were 1% in the environmental cost, indicating that leather pollution was not more serious than other industries, and ranked third in the light industry sector after paper and food. It was far from the position of "the top 100 industries" as people imagined.

Reason three: pollution from the leather industry can be managed.

Li Yuzhong told reporters that tannery resources are renewable resources, the original skin itself is harmless, and leather industry is polluted, which is caused by waste water generated in the process.

This kind of pollution can be controlled, and the mature technology can be discharged to the standard. Moreover, the cost of treatment can be accepted (0.1~0.3 yuan / square foot).

At present, the leather industry in China's leather industry has built up a perfect sewage treatment system, and the tannery sewage treatment effect is generally good.

Reason four: the leather industry of some developed countries such as Italy and Spain still has comparative advantages.

Italy and Spain are all traditional leather producing countries. Data show that Italy's leather production accounts for 20% of the world's total production, accounting for 65% of the total European production.

Spain has more than 101 thousand leather industry employees in 2004, with a total industrial output value of 6 billion 240 million euros, accounting for 13% of Spain's GDP.

The leather industry of these western developed countries still has comparative advantages, which fully shows that the pollution of leather industry is not terrible.

Reason five: the leather industry is exactly a rotten and miraculous industry that fully conforms to the concept of circular economy.

Li Yuzhong said that the leather industry is the processing and reuse of the by-products of animal husbandry, and turned it into a fashionable and exquisite leather product industry. This process not only avoids the waste of raw skins and the environmental pollution caused by decay, but also improves its added value and becomes high-grade raw materials.

Therefore, the existence of leather industry has the structure of circular economy from the beginning, and from the production process, we can see that the leather industry can achieve more than 90% of the utilization of raw leather, which can be said not only in line with the circular economy, but also in turning waste into treasure.

Energy saving and emission reduction frequent highlights

Li Yuzhong told reporters that leather making is a traditional industry in our country. At the initial stage of development, the starting point is low and the demand is relatively low. At that time, the supervision of the state was not strict in this area, and some township enterprises did not manage to discharge, resulting in pollution.

This is caused by the historical situation at that time, and it can not be said that tanning itself is a highly polluting industry.

Today, the leather industry has gone through the extensive development era, and more and more large-scale enterprises.

Especially since entering the "11th Five-Year", relevant departments of the state have promulgated a series of policies, standards and norms for energy conservation and emission reduction. Under the guidance of these industrial policies, the awareness of environmental protection of leather enterprises has been significantly enhanced.

Many enterprises realize that in order to survive, they must adapt to the market and adapt to the policy.

"It is not the consensus of tanning enterprises that enterprises do well in environmental protection, or environmental protection and elimination of enterprises".

In July 16th last year, at the thematic working conference of tanning Specialized Committee of China Leather Association, the "hat picking" project was raised as an important part of the conference and received enthusiastic response from the industry.

The whole industry took action immediately, determined to take off the hat with high pollution in actual action, so that the leather industry could win the fair evaluation of society and win a fair development environment.

With the improvement of environmental awareness, leather industry has made two breakthroughs in cleaner production in recent years.

First, the change of concept. The clean production technology has been widely recognized by the industry. A number of industries and enterprises have increased investment in clean production technology and supporting leather machinery and equipment and chemical materials. Two, cleaner production technology innovation and industrialization application have achieved remarkable results, and new technologies and equipment have emerged one after another, and technology has matured.

At present, reaching the national emission standards has become the minimum requirement of most tanning enterprises.

In 2003, the China Leather Association launched the "leather logo eco leather", which not only put forward higher requirements for various environmental indicators of finished leather products, but also stressed that all aspects of raw materials, production equipment and sewage treatment technology in the production process should reflect the concept of environmental protection.

Through the promotion of the whole industry in the past few years, more than 30 outstanding tannery enterprises have been qualified for the use of "genuine leather symbol ecological leather". These enterprises have played a demonstration effect on energy saving, emission reduction and ecological environmental protection.

According to statistics, the output of finished leather produced by ecological leather enterprises has accounted for 12.5% of the total tannery output.