Enhancement of Conscious Consumerism By Integration of Sustainable Natural Pigments in Textiles

In this article, Mehak Kaur and Mayurika Goel highlight that the Natural Products Group at the Sustainable Agriculture Programme of TERI is working on red pigment production by naturally occurring coloured microbes for application in the textile industry. Creation of colours through fermentation of non-pathogenic fungi on agricultural waste-based media can be used to produce pigments with bioactivities such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer and others in a sustainable way.

- Mehak Kaur and Mayurika Goel

Trillions of litres of water is consumed annually during colouration and other processes of textile manufacturing that includes 10–50 per cent toxic non-biodegradable petrochemical-based synthetic dyes being washed out in natural water bodies. The fashion industry also contributes 4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. While modern synthetic dyes are highly efficient owing to their non-biodegradable nature, their accumulation in the environment is causing depletion of safe water and soil. Further, antimicrobial finishing of fabrics involves heavy metals such as copper, silver, and zinc that leach into the environment. Naturally occurring pigments from microbial sources have been used traditionally but were ignored by the fashion industry because of their inferior performance, restricted colour palette, and higher cost as compared to the synthetic dyes. However, with advances in regenerative agriculture, innovative extraction and cultivation techniques can be utilized to overcome these obstacles.