BMW Leather Upholstery Scraps Can Dress Up Your Walls and Floors

Love those leather seats in your Bimmer so much you want to take 'em inside when you park the car.

Well now you can, sort of.

A Maryland-based company that makes floor and wall covering from recycled leather scrap says that the company that supplies BMW's leather upholstery is now supplying it with scraps.

EcoDomo LLC, a 5-year-old company out of Rockville, Md., uses scrap leather, tree bark and natural latex to manufacture high-end floor and wall tiles with, it says, the look and feel of leather, the resilience of cork and the wear characteristics of hardwood flooring.

Spokesman Christian Nadeau - on his way to the Greenbuild 2009 sustainable bulding materials expo in Phoenix, Ariz. (Wednesday through Friday this week) - told Green Car Advisor that one of the company's suppliers is a major European upholstery products manufacturer that does not only BMW seats but leather seats for several other automakers as well.

EcoDomo can't use tanned and dyed leathers in its process, so post-consumer leather seats can't be blended into the mix, but the company buys raw leather scraps left over when the seat patterns are cut.

"We use about 100 tons or scrap leather a year, " said Nadeau. "Before, it just went to the landfills."

     Yes, that's a leather floor. Both photos from EcoModo's online catalog.

Posted by

John O'Dell November 10, 2009, 1:45 PM

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Leather Upholstery Recycling