Sustainability
- Leather is by nature a renewable resource and replaced less often than other upholstery products. The lifetime of the product can often be generations!
- Optima Leathers sources our own hides, with 100% a byproduct of the meat industry. Instead of going into landfill, they live on in a beautiful way.
- Because we do our own sourcing, we utilize nearly 100% of the hides. The top layer becomes top grain upholstery leather in our product offering. The rest of the hide is sold to apparel and other suppliers of suede products, shoe soles and dog chews, and finally, our scraps from tanning are gathered and sold to makers of bonded leather.
- We are a product of Italy, with strict environmental regulations for the tanning process.
- We use aniline dyes, which are water based/water soluble. During the tanning process, nearly 100% soaks into the hides and the little remaining is sent through a sophisticated recycling process, filtered, and re-used.
- Salt used for preservation is reused.
- Our leather does not contain conflict materials, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polyvinylchloride (PVC), bisphenol A(BPA), polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), plastics, heavy metals or phthalates
- We use salt-based flame retardants to treat our hides and our flame-treated products meet FAR regulation and California Technical Bulletin 117 as well as other industry-standard requirements.
- Our European tanneries are REACH compliant.
- Leather has an infinite shelf life with no loss due to degradation.
- Packaging, including pallets for shipping are collected and reused.
- Scrap leather from cuttings for shipping is bagged separately and responsibly disposed.
We are a member of the Sustainable Furnishing Council