What's the Problem?

Each year, 700 thousand tons of dyes are diluted in 5 trillion liters of drinkable water to dye clothes. The dyes used are petroleum-derived, toxic and polluting, making dyeing water the most hazardous, costly and difficult industrial effluent to treat globally. The result: 20% of the planet's drinking water is contaminated. There are alternatives such as natural dyes. However, the technological approaches used fail to produce scalable dyes, do not adhere to textile fibers, or once adhered are not durable. This makes them 10 times more expensive and lower performing than synthetic dyes, hence they are not adopted industrially.