Sustainable Approaches to Coloration of Textile Materials

Sustainable ways of producing textile goods have gained importance in recent years. Innovations and environmental conservation drive researchers to deliver sustainable solutions to industries. Sustainable products and processes are the genuine requirements of the recent era. Further, the industries are looking for various innovative approaches for designing a high-quality product with an extended life. A major focus has been given to the use of green chemicals and sustainable production processes to produce eco-friendly products. The consumption of water, energy, and chemicals poses serious challenges for the textile industry at every stage of the value chain. The textile industry has many reasons to emphasize sustainability, including reduced costs, protection of the environment, and sustained goodwill from its customers for eco-friendly practices. Numerous research papers suggest techniques to investigate and modify textile processes to decrease the consumption of water and energy, resulting in the reduction of pollution. This chapter deals with various eco-friendly approaches to the coloration of cotton, wool, silk, nylon, and polyester materials. The new dyeing techniques such as air-dyeing, ultrasound-assisted dyeing, electrochemical dyeing, plasma technology, use of natural dyes and pigments, eco-friendly solvents, bio-mordants, supercritical carbon-di-oxide, etc. are the recent advancements that are discussed elaborately.