Water lies at the core of environmental sustainability concerns, as one of the planet’s most vital yet increasingly threatened resources. The textile industry, while economically significant, is highly water-intensive, with substantial environmental impacts across all stages of production—from fiber cultivation to dyeing and finishing. This highlights the urgent need for more sustainable practices and innovative solutions to reduce water use and protect future resources.
According to the World Resources Institute, a US-based non-profit research organization, 5 trillion liters (1.3 trillion gallons) of water is used annually for fabric dyeing alone, enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. For perspective, making one cotton T-shirt can use about 2,700 liters of water—roughly a person’s drinking needs for 2.5 years—while producing a pair of jeans can consume up to 10,000 liters, equivalent to nearly 9 years of a person’s drinking water.
Some industry players are challenging this status quo by fundamentally redesigning how color is extracted and applied to fabric. Among the innovators are Alchemie Technology, a UK-based clean-tech company that uses electrified digital dye jetting; Sodhani Biotech, a natural dye company that uses plant- and bacteria-based dyestuff in India; and Deven Supercriticals, which uses patented sustainable waterless dyeing and finishing technology, also based in India.
New Dye Methods
Alchemie flip-flops traditional dyeing methods, which depend on immersion baths, where entire lengths of fabric are soaked regardless of how much dye is required. Alchemie replaces this with precise, electrified digital jetting that applies dye only where it is needed. “From the outset, Alchemie was designed to transform textile dyeing into a process that is clean without compromising productivity,” says Alan Hudd, Founder of Alchemie Technology.
Under the flagship Endeavour processes for cotton and polyester, and supported via its production technology Discovery, Alchemie’s lab-scale system, the company’s core innovation focuses on a non-contact digital liquid application system designed specifically for textile processing. Using Alchemie’s proprietary Jetronica nozzle design combined with piezoceramic actuation, the system fires nanoliter-scale droplets of dye at high velocity into a continuous web of fabric.
Hudd goes on to explain that each droplet has sufficient momentum to penetrate deeply and evenly into the fibers, delivering consistent color without mechanical contact. Because the nozzles never touch the fabric, the process avoids the immersion baths typical of traditional dyeing, reducing mechanical stress and material waste. “Selective patterning further ensures that dye is applied only where required, improving precision and resource efficiency across a wide range of fibers, including polyester, cotton, nylon, cellulosic, and blended materials,” he adds.
The environmental impact reduction is substantial: energy consumption can be reduced by up to 85%, wastewater generation by around 95%, and chemical use by approximately 30% compared with traditional methods, according to Alchemie.
New Dyes
In the case of Sodhani Biotech, its approach is a simple but strategic decision: do not reinvent the dyeing machine—reinvent the dye itself. “Our differentiation lies not in the machine, but in what goes into it,” explains Sidhant Sodhani, the company’s managing director. By producing highly concentrated, standardized dye extracts compatible with conventional exhaust dyeing systems, the company sidesteps one of the biggest barriers to sustainability adoption—capital expenditure. Mills can still continue using existing soft flow, jigger, and garment dyeing equipment while transitioning to plant-based enzyme inputs.
This compatibility-first strategy is arguably the firm’s most commercially astute move. While many sustainable innovations falter due to infrastructure constraints, Sidhant explains Sodhani’s extracts are designed to plug directly into a system that already accounts for roughly 70% of global dyeing processes. In other words, the company is not asking the industry to change how it dyes—only what it dyes with.
Technologically, Sodhani notes, the company relies on extraction methods such as maceration, solvent extraction, and purification to isolate color compounds from plant matter. The result is a powdered dye that is shelf-stable, soluble, and batch-consistent—three qualities historically absent from natural dyes. This is not a trivial improvement; inconsistency has long plagued natural dye adoption at scale. By reducing variability, Sodhani moves closer to the predictability that manufacturers demand.
Yet the innovation is not without limitations. Colorfastness, how well a dye resists fading, remains a critical challenge. Sodhani acknowledges this openly: “Colorfastness has historically been the Achilles’ heel of natural dyes.”
While their extracts perform well on protein-based fibers like wool and nylon, achieving similar results on cotton remains a work in progress. The company’s ongoing efforts to purify dyes to a single-compound level could improve performance, but this introduces a tension: the more refined the dye, the closer it edges toward the very chemical processes it seeks to replace.
On the sustainability front, the company does present a compelling argument on its website. It claims 40 – 50% lower carbon emissions compared to synthetic dyes and up to 80% reduction in effluent treatment costs due to less toxic wastewater. Additionally, about 30% of its color range is derived from agricultural and industrial waste, embedding circularity into its supply chain. However, the absence of a completed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or benchmarking against widely recognized tools like the Higg Index leaves these claims partially unsubstantiated. To its credit, the company has identified this gap and is actively working to address it.
Perhaps most intriguing technology is Sodhani’s forward-looking investment in microbial dyes. By fermenting violacein-producing bacteria to create a natural blue pigment—traditionally the most difficult color to source sustainably—the company aims to complete a fully natural trichromatic palette. If successful, this could mark a significant milestone in reducing reliance on petrochemical-based dyes.
Still, scale and economics will ultimately determine the company’s impact. With a production capacity of 150 metric tons of dye extract and proven commercial deployments, Sodhani has moved beyond the experimental phase. But challenges remain in cost competitiveness, consistency across all fiber types, and broader market adoption.
In many ways, Sodhani Biotech exemplifies a pragmatic model of sustainability: incremental, systems-aware, and commercially grounded. It does not promise to upend the textile industry overnight. Instead, it offers a more measured proposition—one that aligns environmental ambition with industrial reality. Whether that balance is enough to drive widespread change remains to be seen, but it is, at the very least, a credible step forward.
Waterless Dyeing
As for Deven Supercriticals, through its patented Suprauno technology, is positioning itself as a serious contender to rewrite that equation. But how far does the promise of “waterless dyeing” go in practice?
At its core, Suprauno replaces water—the traditional dyeing medium—with Supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2). Unlike emerging alternatives such as digital inkjet or spray dyeing, this is not a surface-level or precision application technique. Instead, it is a fundamentally different medium-driven process. As Aditya Baser, director at Deven Supercriticals, explains, the company’s innovation lies in “using Supercritical CO₂ as the medium for dyeing instead of water used in conventional dyeing processes.” The implication is significant: rather than incremental efficiency gains, the process eliminates water entirely from the dyeing stage.
The technology itself is both complex and pragmatic. According to Baser, fabrics are first pre-coated with a thin dye solution, then placed in a pressurized vessel where CO₂, in its supercritical state, penetrates deep into the fiber structure. This enables “efficient, uniform penetration and fixing of conventional dyes.” Crucially, “unlike earlier CO₂ dyeing attempts that required specialized dyes, Suprauno works with existing dye chemistries. This design choice enhances industrial compatibility—an often overlooked but decisive factor in scaling sustainability solutions,” notes Baser.
However, this is not a “non-contact” precision technology in the way digital dyeing is marketed cautions Baser. The process still involves physical interaction within a closed vessel. Its advantage lies instead in controlled, uniform diffusion at a molecular level, rather than targeted surface application. In that sense, it prioritizes depth and consistency over pinpoint precision.
Where Suprauno makes its strongest case is sustainability differentiation. The process claims zero water use and up to 90% reduction in auxiliary chemicals, addressing two of the textile industry’s biggest environmental pain points. Additionally, because conventional dyes are used more efficiently, there is less chemical discharge and reduced pollution load. The closed-loop system “further recycles about 95% of the CO₂ used, reinforcing its resource efficiency—compared to traditional dyeing, which generates vast volumes of toxic effluent, the contrast is stark,” says Baser.
Yet, the absence of water does not automatically equate to a lower overall environmental footprint. Supercritical CO₂ processes require high pressure and controlled temperatures, raising legitimate questions about energy consumption. Baser argues that overall energy use is reduced due to shorter batch times, “about half” of conventional processes—and the elimination of energy-intensive wastewater treatment systems.
On climate resilience, Baser notes positively the process appears well-positioned. Since it operates within a sealed system, ambient heat and humidity have minimal impact. There is no reliance on climate-controlled environments such as air conditioning, making it adaptable to increasingly warmer industrial settings. This could prove advantageous as manufacturing hubs in Asia face rising temperatures and energy costs.
Durability and performance, often the Achilles’ heel of sustainable innovations, seem less problematic here. Because the process uses conventional dyes with improved penetration, it maintains familiar performance standards in colorfastness and fabric integrity. The deeper fiber interaction may even enhance consistency across batches —a critical requirement for large-scale production elaborates Baser.
Commercially, Suprauno presents a compelling, if cautious, value proposition. Baser claims that dyeing costs remain “comparable to conventional water-based dyeing” while reducing expenditures on water, chemicals, and Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) infrastructure. Moreover, the ability to dye multiple textile fiber types—including cotton, polyester blends, and wool—on the same platform enhances versatility. However, he concedes the capital investment required for high-pressure CO₂ equipment could still be a barrier for smaller manufacturers, potentially slowing widespread adoption.
Looking ahead, the company’s long-term vision is tied to scaling and standardization. With patented technology, industry recognition, and integration into innovation platforms like Fashion for Good, Baser promises aiming for global relevance. The challenge will be less about proving the technology and more about accelerating its adoption in a cost-sensitive, risk-averse industry.
Next Steps
In fact, these are the types of benefits like fixing the textile manufacturing process and long-term studies on fabric durability that researchers have reiterated in previous studies. Textile design professor Kirsi Niinimäki from Finland’s Aalto University and her colleagues in their study tend to agree on advancements in this sector, observing that reducing water use directly leads to lower energy consumption and fewer chemicals, marking a significant improvement in sustainability.
Beyond cost and sustainability, flexible production models are also needed. New technology that generally offers additional advantages will appeal to modern textile manufacturers. Niinimäki is of the opinion that fast system that can support production speeds, work across woven, knitted, and non-woven fabrics, and accommodate any commercially available dyestuff is what manufacturers are looking for in terms of flexibility in using dyes. She’s perhaps correct, as digital transfer reduces reliance on operator judgement, minimizing human error and improving consistency across large production runs—as opposed to traditional dyeing methods.
In the global race to decarbonize fashion, dyeing remains one of the industry’s most stubborn environmental challenges—water-intensive, chemically heavy, and difficult to reform without disrupting entrenched manufacturing systems. Hence all three industry players concede and conclude that sustainability in textiles has long been a paradox: an industry eager to decarbonize, yet deeply dependent on synthetic dyes that are cheap, scalable, and—environmentally speaking—costly. Hence, redefining how color is manufactured for a low-carbon, digitally driven, global textile industry is of the utmost importance. In essence textile innovation is quite crucial today in a warming planet, as pointed out by Niinimäki.
Dr Thanaseelen Rajasakran is an Assistant Professor at a Malaysian university, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. He is passionate about all things concerning United Nations sustainable development goals.