Short term preservation of goat skin with indigenous azadirachta indica leaf to reduce pollution load in leather processing

The most common method of preserving of raw hides/skins is curing with sodium chloride. Soaking is the first physiochemical operation in tannery, where huge amount of curing salt is released to environment and increased salinity of the wastewater in the form of total dissolved solids (TDS). Chloride is highly soluble and stable that is not affected by the effluent treatment plant. In this study, goat skin was preserved using indigenous Azadirachta Indica (neem) leaf paste with potassium chloride (KCl) to reduce the pollution load in the wastewater. The efficacy of the alternative system was assessed by monitoring the parameters e.g. total viable count (TVC), total coliform count (TCC), total Staphylococcus count (TSC), hair slip, odor, isolated bacterial count and loss of moisture content. Results revealed that preservation of goat skin using Azadirachta Indica leaf paste with 10% potassium chloride (KCl) was effectively preserved the goat skin for the span of 30 days.