Sustainability in Textile Dyeing: Recent Developments

The textile industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental threats globally, producing 60 billion kilograms of fabric annually and using up to 9 trillion gallons of water. During coloration, large volumes of unfixed dye are released into water bodies, and approximately 10–15% of dye is lost into the environment as wastewater. In addition, because of competitiveness in textile industry production, an increase in the use of combinations of synthetic dyes has contributed to dye wastewater, creating an even larger volume of effluent. Dye can remain in the environment for an extended period of time because it has high thermal photostability and resists biodegradation. The release of dye effluent into seawater and river water is very destructive to living organisms, including humans and other animals. Therefore, it is important to study and raise awareness of alternative processes that reduce pollution loads. This chapter discusses recent developments that reduce unfixed color loads in effluent by use of various dyeing techniques such as modification of chemical pretreatments, the nanodyeing process, plasma-induced coloration, supercritical carbon dioxide dyeing, microwave-assisted dyeing and ultrasonic dyeing to the next level.