Abstract: The cutting waste of finished leather is one special kind of leather solid waste, was fully fibered by a pretreatment process and pulping followed, and the obtained leather fibers were then mixed with a certain proportion of paper pulp to prepare leather-paper composite cardboard. Firstly, the fibrous dispersion degree was used as the index to optimize the pretreatment procedure for the finished leather waste, and the optimum fibrosis condition is as follows: temperature of 50 -55 ℃ , acid dosage of 5% -10% and reaction time of 1 h. Then, by using talcum powder, polyacrylamide or rosin as fillers, the papermaking process was then investigated, and the properties of the obtained paperboards were well characterized by the automatic tensile testing machine, scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). Results show that, compared to the cardboard prepared by only leather fibers, the composite leather -paper cardboard exhibited much better mechanical properties, namely, the better weaving situation, higher thermal stability and transformation temperature. Based on these results, a feasible procedure of fibering and papermaking was established in this paper for the re -utilization of the cutting waste of finished leather, and the composite board prepared might be potential to be used as a raw material for the manufacture of consumer goods such as light handbags, shoe boxes and non-woven fabrics.

Key words: finished leather waste, fibering, papermaking, cardboard, thermal-mechanical properties