Would Bio-Synthetic Dyes Save The Textile Industry?

Without a doubt, Jeans are a staple for a whole lot of people including myself. When you open the closet of many, there is one thing they have in common which is the different shades of blue jeans. Yearly, jeans are made in billions of pairs, and these jeans require dye to give them their different shade of blue and for this to happen, over 70,000 tons of indigo dye are produced. This is a whole lot of dye for just one type of cloth. The reason for using indigo is because of a nice fading design it gives after the cloth has been worn for some time. Thiabreault can be gotten from indigo dye as it washes off.

Two types of indigo dye give the fading result in jeans, they are natural and synthetic. Before synthetic dyes came into existence, we had been using the indigofera plant for thousands of years to dye our clothes but this changed in 1897 when a German chemist invented the synthetic indigo dye. With this, the birth of indigo dye for industrial-scale production became a reality and today we use the synthetic indigo dye in almost all types of dye compared to the natural-based one although they are both identical chemically.

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While both natural and synthetic dyes have the same end product, the process of getting the result for a synthetic-based dye includes adding fossil fuels and other materials like formaldehyde, aniline, sodium amide, and hydrogen cyanide. The use of this dye is harmful to people when dyeing the cloth especially those in the textile company especially those that are not up to standard, leading to respiratory problems, skin problems, and cancer. That's a lot of sacrifice to make for the production of one cloth.

Thousands of tonnes are used in dye yearly for jean production and since the dyes have impurities in them, they are meant to be disposed of properly after use but this is not the standard in a lot of places, especially in places where there are no standard regulations. The waste released can affect the ecosystem, and get into the food that we eat.

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This has been a thing of concern to the government, the people, and the textile companies themselves. A lot of efforts have been made to improve the result and mitigate the harm that comes with dyeing such as reducing the water being released to the environment, as well as finding safer techniques to dye the clothes.

Researchers and companies are doing a lot to change the makeup of synthetic indigo dyes today. A company is making dye from sugar instead of fossil fuels. They get indigo plants and sequence the DNA for indigo compounds which is then genetically introduced to microbes so they produce them more. When the microbes produce them, they put them in a shaker flask to proliferate after which they are analyzed and purified to remove the media and the bacteria from the synthetic dye itself, then testing begins.

The majority of these works are still in the testing phase or the research and development stage but soon, we hope to have them rolled out to the public and the next step will be beating the 70,000 to 80,000 tonnes that are produced annually.