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EN
In France, tanneries must be classified according to the level of risk they pose to the environment (ICPE regulation). As a result, they are required to monitor their discharges of water, solvents and solid waste.
CTC's environmental analysis laboratory is COFRAC accredited and approved by the French Ministry of the Environment and Health.
Our experts are on hand to monitor your facilities to ensure compliance with the requirements of the various regulations and standards in force.
CTC can help you set up, sample and measure your discharge points.
In addition to providing sampling and analysis services, CTC is also the ideal partner to help you analyse your environmental issues, assess the situation with you and help you implement solutions to minimise your environmental impact.
Environmental impacts are associated with liquid, solid and gaseous discharges, and with the use of raw materials such as hides, energy, chemicals and water.
The discharges to the wastewater system are mainly from wet operations associated with river work, tanning and currying. Atmospheric emissions are mainly generated by dry-finishing processes, although gaseous emissions can also come from heat production systems.
Any solid waste is mainly generated by the fleshing, slitting and shaving processes. Sewage sludge from effluent treatment can be another source of solid waste, especially when treatment is carried out on site. However, some of these types of waste can be considered by-products, as they can be sold as raw materials to other industries.
To make leather, a raw hide or skin must be treated in a series of baths containing different chemicals. The aim of this process is first to remove any superfluous elements and then to give the leather its characteristic properties such as suppleness, colour, and resistance to decay.
Pollution is therefore caused both by the hide itself and by incompletely absorbed reagents. Tannery effluents generally contain an organic load, mainly associated with the wet-work stages, and a mineral load, associated with the tanning and retanning stages using chromium sulphate as a tanning agent.
In France, the regulatory framework applicable to tanneries is the ICPE (Facilities Classified for Environmental Protection) regulation, and in particular section 2350.
Monitoring the quality of water discharges is an essential part of this activity. The pollution parameters to be monitored are set out in the company's official authorisation documents issued by the Prefecture, based on the requirements of the French ministerial decree of 2 February 1998. In addition, the majority of existing facilities, with or without on-site effluent pre-treatment systems, are connected to the urban wastewater collection network. As a result, additional monitoring parameters may exist and are formalised in a discharge agreement between the company and the local authority.
There is therefore no standard list of applicable parameters to monitor, apart from some of the most commonly encountered: BOD5, COD, suspended solids, total chromium, total metals, pH, sulphide, total nitrogen, total phosphorus.
A decree dated 23 August 2017 amended the requirements of the ministerial decree of 2 February 1998 to take into account feedback from the national campaign known as RSDE, which France carried out in the early 2000s to comply with the European Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) and to search for hazardous substances in water.
As a result of this amendment, some tanneries subject to the authorisation procedure may have had to modify their discharge monitoring procedures or start monitoring for certain new substances: for example, on 1 January 2020, the regulatory threshold for “4-chloro-3-methylphenol” changed to 150 µg/litre (if the flow is greater than 5 g/day).