How to incorporate sustainability in your commercial portfolio

When bandits slaughtered 650 elephants in just weeks, in one of the most remote national parks in West Africa, it was an atrocity that shook the conservation world. Celine Sissler-Bienvenu, IFAW Country Director France and Francophone Africa was one of the few people with the contacts and the capabilities to expose the outrage. Celine is perhaps unique in modern conservation. The first European student and woman to graduate from the Wildlife Specialists School of Garoua (L’Ecole pour la Formation des Spécialistes de la Faune à Garoua) in Cameroon, her training in a mostly male paramilitary environment gathering 15 African cultures gives her a highly influential network of connections across French-speaking Africa.

The president of Portugal’s tanning industry association, APIC, Nuno Carvalho, has said a strategic plan the organisation is currently working to emphasises leather’s place in the circular economy that governments, companies and consumers insist they want to move to, reports Leatherbiz.  In a recent interview with the national newspaper Diário de Notícias, Mr Carvalho said: “The circular economy is ever-present in this sector and this is an idea we reinforce in the ongoing strategic plan that APIC has in place at the moment. The tanning industry and leather are intrinsically circular.” Asked for examples, he said the tanning cluster at Alcanena in central Portugal had developed a project to convert waste from leather production into electricity. He said this could have generated enough electricity to make the cluster’s common effluent treatment plant self-sufficient in terms of energy supply. However, the local authorities opposed the plan. Now, he said, APIC is moving forward with a proposal to use tanning waste in fertiliser production.