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Leather is itself a waste product from the food industry, but still much is wasted that Gen Phoenix feels could be salvaged.
“If you think of an animal hide, it’s the bits like the neck, the shoulders, the armpits, the belly – bits that don’t make good finished leather,” says Richard Peace, the company’s senior director of research and technology.
The company ships in the waste as “wet blue” – the name given to hides partway through the leather process – from tanneries around the world.
It breaks the leather down into a fibre fluff, which is sprayed on to thin sheets of tissue paper.
The sheets are then sandwiched around a fabric – usually recycled polyester – before high-powered water jets bind all the fibres back together.
