Sourcemap has introducing the Responsible Leather Platform, offering supply chain mapping for hides and skins.
Sourcemap, a 2011 MIT technology spin-off dedicated to supply chain visibility, said leather is crucial to fashion, furniture and transportation, but unless it’s responsibly sourced it can pose significant risks to human health, animal welfare and ecosystems.
“Ensuring leather is responsibly sourced means keeping tabs on an ever-changing global supply chain, ensuring best practices and monitoring for external risks,” Sourcemap said. “But with hundreds of supply sites in a typical leather supply chain, it can’t be done by juggling spreadsheets and emailing suppliers.”
The Responsible Leather Platform augments traditional approaches such as self-assessments, audits and certifications with supply chain mapping, which takes into account every step in raw material production, from farms and slaughterhouses to wet-blue and finishing tanneries. This makes it possible to manage industrial standards and ensure that animals are treated humanely and that forests and ecosystems remain protected.
The Responsible Leather Platform uses innovative data collection tools to quickly and accurately map raw material origins and latest in deforestation monitoring to keep tabs on the risk posed by cattle grazing in certain regions. The program utilizes a suite of business process support solutions, all available through one secure cloud platform.
They include surveys that confirm the identity of sub-suppliers like wet-blue tanneries, slaughterhouses and farms through an easy-to-use online portal, and supply chain mapping that efficiently maintains an up-to-date supply chain map. Standards and certifications are shown to ensure suppliers are compliant with Leather Working Group and other industry best practices, while zero-deforestation commitments are measured by monitoring cattle-producing regions for deforestation risk.
Every supplier is also scored based on industry best practices for an overview of problem areas and a more comprehensive assessment if the supplier is located in a high-risk region.
There are also risk heat maps that generate instant and continuous insights into the risks posed to water, forests and biodiversity areas through a powerful geo-analytics engine that relies on satellite imagery and best-available risk-probability heat maps.
Brand users can achieve leather traceability through continuous due diligence that reconciles every transaction, delivery, receipt and certificate in one automated platform with built-in auditor access.