Oral · Pages 169–177
Abstract
Research summary supplied by the authors
The tannery sector and the fashion groups are determined to create products, such as chemicals, leather articles and fi nished products having reduced environmental impacts in respect to circular economy, taking into account their end-of-life fate. The offi cial method UNI EN ISO 20136:2020 [1] allows determining the aerobic biodegradability of leather articles in conditions similar to a biological wastewater treatment, but presently there are no offi cial methods for the leather sector to assess aerobic biodegradability in composting conditions and compostability of fi nished leather articles, even though there is a growing demand. The present study reports the application of the whole protocol foreseen for plastic and packaging products, according to UNI EN 13432:2002 [2], which includes aerobic biodegradability in composting conditions, large- scale disintegration tests and the assessment of the phytotoxicity of the generated compost. The protocol was successfully tested on different metal-free fi nished leather articles for footwear, such as upperwear and soles, and on fi nished products. Surprisingly, the leather articles showed high biodegradability and compostability regardless of they are white, vegetable or synthetic tanned, even for high thickness. It is also worth to mention that leather articles showing high biodegradability according to UNI EN ISO 20136:2020 resulted also compostable. In terms of biodegradability of tannery chemicals, the present work reports also a comparative study about the application of OECD 301 [3] methods investigating different quantities of sample to be tested, different timing and inoculi. In all cases, comparable results were obtained.