Tangible shift
In clearing the tenth five-year plan recently, the Union cabinet gave the green light to a programme that seeks to metamorphose the leather industry into an environment-friendly sector. While the tanning process will no longer cause pollution, leather itself would become a comple tely biodegradable product if this plan is successfully implemented.
“The main objective is to make a paradigm shift from chemical processing to bioprocessing,” reveals T Ramasami, director, Central Leather Research Institute (clri), the national apex research body for leather and related products, and a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (csir) affiliate. The programme would involve 11 institutions