Sustainability

Leather is a natural material and, importantly, the skins we use are a by-product of the food industry. The animals are raised for meat; we then take a material that would otherwise be discarded and turn it into something durable, useful, and capable of lasting for generations.

We take care over where our raw materials come from. The animals supplying our skins are reared on land that is not from areas of recent deforestation, and we ensure that they come from ethical, reputable sources.

We use vegetable tanning agents, derived from naturally occurring tannins including materials such as Oak and Chestnut. Our vegetable tanning materials come from commercially managed forests and areas not affected by tropical deforestation or significant habitat destruction.
We do not use heavy-metal tanning compounds such as chrome in the manufacture of our leather.

Making things that last

Perhaps the most important part of sustainability for us is also the simplest: longevity.

Our leather is used to bind books, conserve historic volumes and create objects intended to be kept. A well-made binding can be passed down generations; a carefully conserved book can survive for centuries.

We don’t want to make disposable materials, we want to make materials that become part of things worth keeping.

Our Trade Association

We are a member of Leather UK, the trade association representing the UK leather industry. You can read more about leather, its origins, and its environmental impact in their guide to Leather and the Environment.

Making leather needs energy and water, and lots of it, so reducing our consumption has been a priority for many years.

When we moved to our current tannery in 2010, we invested in more efficient heating and hot-water systems, resulting in an almost immediate 50% reduction in gas usage.
Further improvements have included low-energy and LED lighting, re insulation of heated areas, and in 2022, the installation of solar panels to generate some of our own electricity. Since then, we have generated over 40MWh of electricity at our Tannery.

Water is just as important. Wherever possible, water is recycled within our manufacturing processes. Once it can no longer be reused, it passes through our own on-site effluent treatment plant, where it is treated before entering the sewage system in accordance with Scottish Water requirements.

We also purchased a new production drum in 2025, allowing us to produce leather using less water & materials than ever before.

Where we can, journeys are only undertaken in electric vehicles or on public transport, using trams or trains instead of taxis or planes. This can’t always be the case, but we always try to be environmentally conscious when travelling.

Over the past decade we have made an effort to record and monitor our Carbon Footprint, with an aim of trying to conform to the UN's Paris Accords. Since 2019 we have managed to decrease our Scope 1 + 2 emissions by over 12 tonnes, and are over halfway to meeting our reduction target in this area.
By reducing our plane journeys, and making smarter choices with our waste & travel, we have also made a sizeable reduction in our scope 3 emissions.

Where materials can be reused, we reuse them; where they can’t, we recycle wherever practical. The same thinking applies to our packaging. We choose recycled and responsibly sourced materials where possible and reuse perfectly good boxes and packaging rather than throwing them away. We’ve moved across to paper padded envelopes, and we don’t buy any plastic filling for our boxes - any bubble wrap you may find came to us in a box first!

So, if your Hewits order arrives in a box that once contained shoes, pet food or something completely unrelated to bookbinding, that’s not an accident - the box is simply living a new life!

In 2024 we started making a real push to reduce our paper usage, and we’ve successfully reduced the paper involved in our ordering & invoicing by over 70%. Invoices are now sent digitally to all customers, and emails aren't printed off anymore.

We work with a reputable waste company to ensure that any waste & recycling we generate goes to the right place, and doesn't just end up in landfill. Our staff are all aware of what item goes in what bin, and we even recycle any plastic gloves we use at our on site TerraCycle point.

Finally, we want to ensure that we don’t waste any pieces of leather we have left over from samples or cutting jobs. So, recently we started collecting all of our leather scraps together in a dedicated bin, and they are then donated to local primary schools for arts & crafts classes & clubs.

In 2021, we opened a TerraCycle recycling point at our tannery, allowing our local community to recycle plastics that couldn’t normally be put in household recycling. This included crisp packets, confectionary wrappers, Pringles tubes, and more!
The whole community rallied behind this, with local schools & litter picking groups bringing bags of waste along to us every few weeks.

Unfortunately, these manufacturer-funded programmes came to an end, but together we had recycled more than 200kg of hard to recycle plastic and raised over £200 each for Macmillan Cancer Support and Riding for the Disabled, the charities we chose to support with our recycling.

The community collection point has now closed, but we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who saved their packaging, filled our bins, and helped make it worthwhile.

Our latest project takes us outside the tannery altogether.

We now sponsor a local honeybee colony through Kin Bees, helping support pollination and biodiversity around the farmland where the hive is kept. And because we can never resist bringing things back to bookbinding, even the beeswax will eventually find its way to craftspeople for waxing thread.

Our hive has quite a story of its own, so why not find our why it’s called J Hewit & Daughters, and why its queen is named Janet.

Meet our bees →