Mekuanint Tadilo1, Habtie Ambaw2
The traditional leather products are important household materials and income generating business especially for the
rural community. To produce traditional leather products, they follow different steps and procedures and to facilitate
this process in between, they apply different materials and indigenous vegetables. The involvement of traditional tanners
in the market is significant that the volume of raw cattle hide they absorb for producing traditional leather goods is
more than 600,000 per annum. All the local tanners who work through the process were made up of young and middle
aged men. By tradition, local tanners in Ethiopia belong to a low-caste and are looked down upon by other parts of the
community. Artisanal group has suffered from prejudice and relative isolation in society. Considering the high amount
of produced leather waste which contains toxic and pollutes plant residues, there should be a great interest to develop a
water collection center in the nearby surrounding so as to protect pollution of water bodies which are reserved both for
humans and animals.
