In the early 1980’s, Hulshof made a major commitment to protecting the environment of our community. Over the following 20+ years we made many costly changes to our processes and to our physical plant that resulted in a large reduction in the pollution that is inherent in the tanning industry. We are proud to say that we are one of the “GREENEST “ tanneries in operating Europe today. Some of our most important improvements during this period were:
1980: High efficient chrome tanning reducing the amount of chrome in
our waste water.
1987: Wastewater treatment further cleaning the water that left our
factory.
1990: Hair-saving liming.
1991: Start large-scale soil sanitation
1992: 98% Fresh hides rather than salted hides eliminating harmfull salt
in our waste water.
1994: 97% Water bases finished eliminating solvent fumes from the air.
1995: Low-Sulphur liming.
2000: Computer-controlled chemical formulas insuring the minimum
quantity of required chemicals are used.
2001: Construction of our hypermodern waste water treatment facility
2km outside of town.
There is still a lot of research being conducted regarding the improvement of our tanning-processes. Conclusion of the environment-section is that the increased technological complexity linked to an upgrading of the quality and a reduction of the labour costs makes tanning in the less developed countries not competitive anymore and is furthermore on environmental area irresponsible.