Dermacolor is an example of how a process for producing biodegradable leathers can also be used by those who produce chrome-tanned leathers.
Future White is the trump card of Dermacolor, based in Castelfranco di Sotto (Pisa province), specialized in the design and manufacture of chemical products for leather processing, both for the wet phase and for the finishing. This is a highly innovative system for tanneries aiming at getting a “biodegradable leather” certification about wastewater and compost, which will be presented at the Tanning Tech Show, scheduled September 20 – 22. “In spring – explained Andrea Meucci, the Technical Manager of the Tuscan company, whom we interviewed during the ProssimaPelle exhibition held in Santa Croce sull’Arno – this process was officially presented for the first time at the Dubai Fair, recording an amazing success. Since then, we recorded an ever-increasing interest and now we are ready to present it at the Milan Show. We are convinced we will have further satisfactions from what is a completely organic tanning.” The Future White is a system designed to revolutionize the preliminary steps of the tanning process, eliminating the main risk factors for the environment and creating the conditions to guarantee hides circularity. “It is Future White, the trump card a white pre-tanning agent – Meucci specifies – that is, chrome-free, but at the same time it is a “pre-tanning of the future”, because it’s also glutaraldehyde- free, another substance on the list of the ‘unwanted’, free of phosphonium salts, triazine compounds and other metals, anything that is dangerous for both the environment and workers. The system stabilizes leather making it indeerable, making it storable for several years with the possibility of drying it and then re-greening it without the aid of chemical bleaching agents.” But there is one particular aspect that makes Future White a winner on the market and projected into the future, especially according to the increasing restrictions in the environmental field. This is explained by Dermacolor’s Technical Manager: “We have focused on fine-tuning this pre-tanning with an innovative system, that lets the processing discharges obtain the biodegradability certification from the bodies in charge. With the Future White processing, the scraps, splits, crusts and shavings we get are all chrome-free, thus featuring a low environmental impact, so to be treated and recovered ecologically. It is a versatile pre-tanning system, starting from which tanneries can obtain all types of leather, from the vegetable one to the metal-free one up to the classic chrome-tanned one with an essential difference: the chrome never enters the working cycle until the retanning phase.”