Great! You’ve bought a cool purple shirt made from organic cotton! That’s eco-friendly right?
But what about that funky purple dye…is that eco-friendly too?
Unfortunately, if we went with the most eco-conscious dye, our closet would have a very boring color palette!
Most people assume that natural dyes must be the safest to use on organic clothing. However, even natural dyes have their downside.
Natural dyes must use mordants to fix the natural plant dye to the fabric. The fabric is boiled once with the mordant and then boiled with the natural dye and simmered.
Mordants are usually made of alum, copper or iron. Copper and iron produce toxic fumes when boiled and they and alum are toxic to humans at the amounts needed to dye 1 pound of fabric.
Add those concerns to the carbon footprint of bringing the fabric to a boil and then simmering for several hours!
Natural dyes also do not bond as well as synthetic dyes so more of the dye, which can come from poisonous plants, is rinsed down the drain.
Natural dyes are also limited in their colours and can vary widely making exact color matches difficult.
Conventional dyes are the least ecologically sound. They are made from petrochemicals and use a lot of water, salt and energy. A significant portion of the dye chemical remains in the dye water and must be disposed of.
Many of the countries overseas, where much of our clothing is made nowadays, do not have the same pollution standards as the U.S. In some of these places the excess dye is released into the environment.
What most manufacturers use on their organic cotton products is something called low impact fiber reactive dyes.
Low impact fiber reactive dyes chemically bond to the fabric at a low temperature and much less of the chemical remains in the water after the dying process than conventional dyes. Most of the remaining dye (95%) can be removed through a chemical process before disposing or reclaiming the water.
Low impact fiber reactive dyes contain no known toxins and are considered to be the most ecologically sound of all dyes.
That said, fiber reactive dyes are still made from petrochemicals and some of those chemicals are still released into the water system.
The absolute best choice for organic clothing and unfortunately, also the most boring is to buy non-dyed organic clothes.
You can get a limited amount of color from naturally colored cotton clothes and from wool, which comes in a small variety of shades from naturally colored sheep. It is still not very exciting but may be the best bet if you have chemical sensitivities.
If you absolutely can’t forego fabulously colored clothing, you can still be eco-friendly by avoiding really dark colors such as navy or black. These colors require the highest amount of dye whic attaches to the fabric very inefficiently so more is potentially rinsed down the drain. Turquoise is another color to avoid as its dyeing process often requires the use of copper - a polluting element.
I love color, so I try to maintain a balance. Some of my clothes are the healthy undyed type, some are dyed with fiber reactive dyes and some I’ve had for ten years that were dyed with conventional dyes! They’re still in style, right??
