Leather goods regulations by market
17 obligations that name leather in their scope, from 6 instruments across 3 markets, soonest date first, each stating how firm its date actually is.
The instruments (6)
| Instrument | Citation | Market | Made by | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia Care Labelling Standard | F2023L01187 | AU | Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services | In force |
| EU PFHxA restriction | Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/2462 | EU | European Commission | In force |
| EUDR | Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 | EU | European Commission | In force |
| Safer Clothes and Textiles Act | California Health and Safety Code, added by AB 1817 (2022) | US-CA | California Department of Toxic Substances Control | In force |
| US Leather Guides | 16 CFR Part 24 | US | Federal Trade Commission | In force |
| US Leather Tanning Effluent Guidelines | 40 CFR Part 425 | US | Environmental Protection Agency | In force |
Next 90 days 1
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Safer Clothes and Textiles Act California Health and Safety Code, added by AB 1817 (2022) US-CA
From 1 January 2027 the total organic fluorine threshold in the definition of "regulated PFAS" falls from 100 ppm to 50 ppm, so a textile article at or above 50 ppm total organic fluorine is inside the prohibition and the certificate-of-compliance duty.
Scheduled Adopted, dates set, not yet in force
The step sits in the definition, not in the prohibition, which is why it is easy to miss: § 108971 is unchanged, but what it prohibits widens. A certificate of compliance issued against the 100 ppm figure states compliance with a chapter that has since moved.
Next 12 months 1
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EU PFHxA restriction Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/2462 EU
From 10 October 2027, the same limits apply to textiles, leather, furs and hides for the general public other than clothing and related accessories, such as carpets, rugs, curtains, blinds, upholstery, textile wall coverings, tablecloths and bed linen.
Scheduled Adopted, dates set, not yet in force
Recital 17 states that this paragraph covers such textiles also where used in transport, public places and offices. The paragraph 3 exemptions apply here too, and paragraph 8 exempts articles placed on the market before 10 October 2027. This is the last textile date in the instrument: the 2029 date in the same entry concerns firefighting foams only.
Already in force 8
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Safer Clothes and Textiles Act California Health and Safety Code, added by AB 1817 (2022) US-CA
From 1 January 2025 no person may manufacture, distribute, sell or offer for sale in California any new, not previously used, textile article containing regulated perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The verbs reach manufacture, distribution, sale AND offering for sale, so a listing is inside it before a transaction happens. It applies to NEW articles only — not previously used — which leaves resale of existing stock outside. Two definitions do the work here. "Regulated PFAS" means either PFAS intentionally added with a functional or technical effect, or presence at or above a total organic fluorine threshold of 100 ppm from 1 January 2025 and 50 ppm from 1 January 2027. "Textile" expressly includes leather, cotton, silk, jute, hemp, wool, viscose, nylon and polyester, and "textile articles" covers apparel, accessories, handbags, backpacks, draperies, shower curtains, furnishings, upholstery, bedding, towels, napkins and tablecloths.
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Safer Clothes and Textiles Act California Health and Safety Code, added by AB 1817 (2022) US-CA
A manufacturer must use the least toxic alternative, including alternative design, when removing regulated PFAS from textile articles to comply with this chapter.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
A substitution duty, and it is easy to miss because it constrains HOW compliance is reached rather than what the product must contain. Removing PFAS by swapping in a different problem chemistry is not compliance with this subdivision. It expressly contemplates alternative DESIGN, not only alternative chemistry.
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Safer Clothes and Textiles Act California Health and Safety Code, added by AB 1817 (2022) US-CA
A manufacturer of a textile article must provide persons who offer the product for sale or distribution in California with a certificate of compliance stating that the article complies with this chapter and does not contain any regulated PFAS.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
A document duty running from the manufacturer to everyone downstream who offers the goods, which makes it the practical mechanism a retailer uses to discharge its own exposure. Because the threshold in the definition drops to 50 ppm on 1 January 2027, a certificate issued against the 100 ppm figure does not carry forward — the statement is that the article complies with the chapter, and the chapter moves.
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Australia Care Labelling Standard F2023L01187 AU
Regulated goods must comply with either the requirements in section 11, which apply the Australian/New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 1957:1998 Textiles—Care labelling as varied by that section, or the requirements in section 12, which apply Clause 4 of ISO 3758:2012 Textiles—Care labelling code using symbols. The two routes are alternatives and a compliant article need satisfy only one.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Section 6 defines regulated goods as any clothing, household textiles, apparel including wedding dresses, christening gowns and promotional, sample and flawed articles, furnishings, upholstered furniture, bedding including sleeping bags, mattresses, bed bases, piece goods and yarns made from textiles, plastics, plastic coated fabrics, suede, skins, hides, grain leathers or furs. Section 7 lists ten classes of exempt goods, among them all second-hand goods, all footwear other than hosiery and the textile materials used in making footwear, all jute products, and all bags and cases. The date given here is computed rather than stated: section 2 commences the instrument on 5 September 2023, section 5 defines the first transitional period as six months from commencement and the second as twelve months from the day after the first ends, so section 10 governs from 5 March 2025. Sections 8 and 9, which allowed the repealed 2010 notice as a third route during those periods, each provide for their own repeal at the end of the period they govern. The instrument sets the content of the standard. What follows from supplying goods that do not meet it sits in the Australian Consumer Law, which is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and is not part of this instrument.
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EUDR Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 EU
Relevant commodities and relevant products may not be placed or made available on the market, or exported, unless all three conditions are met: they are deforestation-free; they were produced in accordance with the relevant legislation of the country of production; and they are covered by a due diligence statement.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Three cumulative conditions, and the third is a document rather than a property of the goods — a genuinely deforestation-free hide still fails Article 3 without a due diligence statement. The prohibition reaches EXPORT as well as placing on the market, so an EU tannery shipping out is inside it. Textiles enter through cattle: leather is a relevant product derived from a relevant commodity. Nothing in this Regulation says "textile", "fabric" or "fibre", so it will not be found by searching for the material.
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EUDR Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 EU
Operators must exercise due diligence in accordance with Article 8 before placing relevant products on the market or exporting them, in order to prove compliance with Article 3, and may not place them on the market or export them without prior submission of a due diligence statement.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The statement is submitted BEFORE the goods move, not compiled afterwards, which makes this a gating step in the shipping process rather than a record-keeping duty. Due diligence must prove compliance, so the burden sits with the operator rather than with an enforcement authority.
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EUDR Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 EU
Articles 3 to 13, 16 to 24, and 26, 31 and 32 apply from 30 December 2025. For operators that were established as micro-undertakings or small undertakings as at 31 December 2020 under Article 3(1) or (2) of Directive 2013/34/EU, those Articles apply from 30 June 2026, except as regards products covered in the Annex to Regulation (EU) No 995/2010.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The deferral is keyed to what the operator WAS on 31 December 2020, not to what it is today — a business that has since grown past the small-undertaking thresholds still takes the June 2026 date, and one that has since shrunk does not. Anyone reading the unamended Regulation gets dates twelve months early.
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EU PFHxA restriction Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/2462 EU
From 10 October 2026, textiles, leather, furs and hides in clothing and related accessories for the general public, footwear for the general public, and mixtures for the general public may not be placed on the market or used at or above 25 ppb for the sum of PFHxA and its salts, or 1,000 ppb for the sum of PFHxA-related substances, measured in homogeneous material.
Scheduled Adopted, dates set, not yet in force
The limit is per homogeneous material, so a garment is measured layer by layer and trim by trim, not as a whole. "Mixtures for the general public" brings consumer waterproofing sprays in on the same date. Paragraph 3 exempts personal protective equipment in risk category III under Regulation (EU) 2016/425 (points (a), (c) to (f), (h) and (l) of its Annex I), medical devices, in vitro diagnostic devices and construction textiles. Paragraph 7 exempts articles placed on the market before 10 October 2026. No test method is named; recital 7 says standard methods are still to be developed. The scope wording is "for the general public", so products supplied only to professionals fall outside it.
No date set 7
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no date set
US Leather Tanning Effluent Guidelines 40 CFR Part 425 US
This Part applies to any leather tanning and finishing facility which discharges or may discharge process wastewater pollutants to the waters of the United States, or which introduces or may introduce process wastewater pollutants into a publicly owned treatment works.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Wording identical in structure to the textile mill Part at 40 CFR 410: discharging to a municipal treatment works does not put a tannery outside this Part, it changes which standards apply. "May discharge" brings a facility in before any discharge has occurred.
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no date set
US Leather Tanning Effluent Guidelines 40 CFR Part 425 US
The Part divides tanneries into subcategories by PROCESS ROUTE, each with its own subpart and limitations: hair pulp, chrome tan, retan-wet finish; hair save, chrome tan, retan-wet finish; retan-wet finish-sides; no beamhouse; through-the-blue; shearling; pigskin; and retan-wet finish-splits. Each subpart states the operations it covers — the hair pulp subcategory, for example, applies to a tannery processing raw or cured cattle or cattle-like hides into finished leather by chemically dissolving the hide hair, chrome tanning and retan-wet finishing.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Classification follows how the tannery UNHAIRS AND TANS, not what leather it sells — a tannery is in the hair pulp subcategory or the hair save one according to whether it dissolves the hair or recovers it. "No beamhouse" and "through-the-blue" are likewise process descriptions. A facility running more than one route may fall into more than one subcategory.
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no date set
US Leather Tanning Effluent Guidelines 40 CFR Part 425 US
Effluent limitations are set per subcategory and expressed in kg per 1,000 kg — pounds per 1,000 pounds — of RAW MATERIAL, that is the hide as received by the tannery. The parameters limited include BOD5, total suspended solids, oil and grease, total chromium, and pH within a stated range. Existing point sources must achieve the best practicable control technology limitations for their subpart except as provided in 40 CFR 125.30 to 125.32.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The denominator is RAW MATERIAL, the hide as received — not finished leather. Yield does not help: a tannery that wastes less hide gets no extra headroom, because the divisor is what came in. TOTAL CHROMIUM appears here as a discharge limit, which is a different duty from the REACH Annex XVII restriction on chromium VI in leather articles recorded elsewhere in this register — same metal, different point in the process, different obligation. The figures quoted in the evidence note are ONE subcategory's BPT row, given to show the table's shape; every subpart has its own, and this record does not reproduce them.
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no date set
US Leather Guides 16 CFR Part 24 US
These Guides apply to the manufacture, sale, distribution, marketing or advertising of all kinds of leather or simulated-leather industry products, enumerated in § 24.0(a) — including trunks, suitcases, travelling bags, brief cases, billfolds, wallets, key cases, coin purses, handbags, shoulder bags, purses, footwear, and belts when not sold as part of a garment, and similar articles.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Scope is an enumerated list, and belts carry a condition on their face: in scope only "when not sold as part of a garment". The same belt is inside these Guides sold alone and outside them supplied with a coat. Advertising is named alongside manufacture and sale, so the Guides reach marketing copy directly.
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no date set
US Leather Guides 16 CFR Part 24 US
These Guides are administrative interpretations of laws administered by the Federal Trade Commission, addressing the application of section 5 of the FTC Act to industry products, and providing the basis for voluntary compliance. Conduct inconsistent with the positions articulated in the Guides may result in corrective action by the Commission under section 5.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
Recorded as its own obligation because the legal character of this Part decides what a supplier is arguing about. There is no offence of breaching a Guide. The exposure is section 5 of the FTC Act, and the Guides are the Commission's published view of what section 5 means for these products.
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no date set
US Leather Guides 16 CFR Part 24 US
It is unfair or deceptive to misrepresent, directly or by implication, the kind, grade, quality, quantity, material content, thickness, finish, serviceability, durability, price, origin, size, weight, ease of cleaning, construction, manufacture, processing, distribution, or any other material aspect of an industry product.
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The list is long and closes with "any other material aspect", so it is illustrative rather than exhaustive. "Directly or by implication" is what reaches imagery, styling and adjacency rather than only stated claims — a product photographed to read as leather can misrepresent without a word being written.
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no date set
US Leather Guides 16 CFR Part 24 US
It is unfair or deceptive to misrepresent the composition of any industry product or part of it, and to use the unqualified term "leather", or other unqualified terms suggestive of leather, unless the product so described is composed in all substantial parts of leather. Where all or part of a product is made of non-leather material that appears to be leather, that fact or the general nature of the material should be disclosed — for example "Not leather", "Imitation leather", "Simulated leather", "Vinyl", "Vinyl coated fabric" or "Plastic".
Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
The test is "in all substantial parts", not a majority and not a marketing judgement. For footwear the Guides define three parts in a footnote — the upper, the lining and sock, and the outersole — so a shoe with a leather upper and a synthetic lining does not carry the unqualified term. The disclosure examples are given in the text, which makes them the safe wordings rather than one option among many.