Green fashion: Why dyeing clothes has a big environmental impact

The apparel industry uses an estimated five trillion litres of water each year to simply dye fabric, according to the World Resources Institute, external, a US-based non-profit research centre.

The industry is, in turn, responsible for 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution, while also using up vital resources like groundwater in some countries. It also releases a massive carbon footprint from start to finish – or around 10% of annual global emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, external.

Alchemie says its technology can help solve that problem.

Called Endeavour, its machine can compress fabric dyeing, drying, and fixing into a dramatically shorter and water-saving process.

Endeavour uses the same principle as inkjet printing to rapidly and precisely fire dye onto and through the fabric, according to the company. The machine’s 2,800 dispensers fire roughly 1.2 billion droplets per linear meter of fabric.

“What we’re effectively doing is registering and placing a drop, a very small drop precisely and accurately onto the fabric. And we can switch these drops on and off, just like a light switch,” says Dr Hudd.

Alchemie claims big savings through the process: reducing water consumption by 95%, energy consumption up to 85%, and working three to five times faster than traditional processes.

Developed initially in Cambridge, the company is now in Taiwan to see how Endeavour works in a real-world environment.

“The UK, they’re really strong in R&D projects, they’re really strong in inventing new things, but certainly if you want to move to commercialisation you need to go to the real factories,” says Ryan Chen, the new chief of operations at Alchemie, who has a background in textile manufacturing in Taiwan.