Startups Are Vying to Fix One of Fashion’s Fossil-Fueled Secrets
Transferring dye to fabric is incredibly carbon-intensive. Newer sustainable techniques, including coloring with carbon dioxide, may help.
To make black powder used to dye textiles, Living Ink uses byproduct algae material grown at Earthrise Nutritionals in California.
Courtesy of Living Ink
At a factory in Vietnam, workers load rolls of undyed polyester into a steel container connected to a storage tank that holds carbon dioxide. When pressure in the container is turned up, the CO2 takes on the properties of both gas and liquid, and in turn develops a superpower: the ability to dissolve dye. The factory, which uses technology supplied by Dutch startup DyeCoo Textile Systems, is making clothes colored by carbon dioxide.
DyeCoo says its process for getting colorants onto fabric doesn’t use any water or bonding chemicals — water is still needed for rinsing, though — and can halve a factory’s typical water use and emissions from textile dyeing. (About 95% of the CO2 can also be recycled between jobs.) Since 2010, the company has been working with garment makers in Taiwan, the Netherlands and Southeast Asia, and its backers include Nike Inc.’s venture arm and Ikea.