Our laboratory specialises in testing the leather biodegradability. We currently offer the following tests:

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ISO 20200 – test what happens to the leather in a composting environment by incubating the leather in a synthetic compost mixture. Does it break down fully, so that the pieces are too small to be captured at the end?

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ISO 20136 – test whether the leather can be eaten by bacteria, by measuring how much CO  the bacteria “breathe” out. Do the bacteria flourish when they have the leather to feed off, producing high levels of CO  ?

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ISO 20200 tests whether leather has broken down, but it cannot say whether it has been eaten by the bio-cultures, or simply disintegrated into lots of tiny pieces like micro-plastics. This is why we have introduced ISO 20136 – together the tests demonstrate that leather can be composted fully.

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Plant Response Test – this shows how well plants grow in composted leather, by comparing plants grown with leather against plants grown without leather. Will plants grown with leather grow better than the control, or will they be less healthy than the control?

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Ecotoxicity – this is where we run a series of chemical tests on the growing medium with leather and compare it against one without leather to see if there are any significant ecotoxins in the leather sample after biodegredation.

 

Want to know more? See our infographic below of how these tests work together.

Our lab-mice are busy on their treadmills, working on a way for you to book your laboratory services online. In the meantime, please be patient with us, and get in touch to ask about availability and book your samples in. All of our laboratory services can be done remotely with samples being posted to us, allowing you to keep working on your R&D programme while keeping everyone safe.