Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2015), pp. 79–82. DOI 10.3233/AJW-150020 Effective Utilization of Leather Waste for Cultivation of Bacteria Rajendran Kumar*, Swarna V. Kanth 1 , V. Sasi, G. Jagan and Shampa Sen Industrial Biotechnology Division, School of Bio Sciences and Technology VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu – 632014, India 1 Central Leather Research Institute, Council of Scientifc and Industrial Research Adyar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu – 600020, India * rkumrs@gmail.com Received March 9, 2015; revised and accepted October 5, 2015 Abstract: Environmental pollution is one of the major problems associated with rapid industrialization in developing countries. Tanneries generate huge amount of solid waste. Leather waste has been utilized for land flling, preparation of boards, soil fertilizer and animal feed. In the present study, solid leather waste was hydrolyzed with acid and alkali. The tanning agent was removed from the hydrolysate. The hydrolysate was analyzed for protein/amino acid content. The hydrolysate along with agar was used as solid media (Leather Hydrolysate Agar) for the cultivation of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The signifcant growth of bacteria on leather hydrolysate agar shows the possible use of leather waste hydrolysate in the preparation of microbiological media as well as supplement to bacteriological media. Key words: Leather waste, hydrolysis, leather hydrolysate agar, bacteriological media. Introduction Tanning industry is one of the fastest growing industries in south and south eastern Asia. About four million metric tonnes of solid leather waste are produced globally every year and approximately 40–50% of the hides are lost to shavings and trimmings which is not utilized effciently. Only 20% of hides are converted to leather products (Alexander et al., 1991). The production of much greater amount of leather waste has been a problem in many countries. Some of the waste may be saleable but the remainder must be disposed. There is an increased curb on land disposal due to their smell, increasing landfll costs, toxicity due to the quality and quantity of chromium content and their adverse effect on the surrounding land, water and the local fora and fauna. It was reported that a single *Corresponding Author tannery could cause pollution of groundwater around a radius of 7 to 8 km (Mondal et al., 2005). There is an increasing need for the effective utilization of these massive leather wastes. Now there is a growing interest in the effective utilization of the bio-waste primarily due to their valuable chemical composition. Leather wastes are considered as an excellent source of high valuable products such as collagen, gelatin and collagen hydrolysate. Collagen is used in drug delivery and tissue engineering (Pachence, 1996). Gelatin is primarily used as drug capsule and in other biomedical applications (Einersona, 2002). Every organism in the universe requires nutrient for energy production, cell division and growth. These nutrients at the elementary level consists of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese and some trace