Fashionable Water: Water Use and Pollution in the Textile Dyeing Process

The problem we are going to address is excessive water use and water pollution in the textile industry, specifically in textile dyeing. The dyeing process demands a large amount of water for only a small output of dyed fabric. The excess water from dye, now polluted with chemicals and additives, is often dumped into lakes, rivers, reservoirs, or other water resources, and is one of the causes of industrial pollution. In order to address this problem, we are looking at alternative technologies (specifically a method used by DyeCoo), that use mediums other than water, such as carbon dioxide, to transfer dyes to fabrics. We are looking at a specific case study, a textile manufacturing company in Ningbo, China, to see whether or not these alternative dyeing methods could be applied to reduce excessive water use and pollution.https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/gps-posters/1211/thumbnail.jp