With summer blooming into full colour richly dyed textiles are everywhere. As the sun shines and wardrobes lighten, it’s time to shed some light on a hidden truth of traditional textile dyeing. Seasonal shades do not need to be damaging, a revolution in cleaner, smarter digital dyeing is replacing gallons of water with microscopic precision.
Hot Days, Polluted Waterways
For as long as seasons have changed, traditional textile dyeing methods have been depriving water and energy sources. An estimated 5 trillion litres of water are used every year to dye fabrics alone. Using up to 150 litres per kilogram of fabric. In traditional textile dyeing, this must be heated – often to 135°C – for both dyeing and rinsing cycles. These processes demand immense energy, typically from sources such as fossil fuels, to generate the necessary steam for certain fabrics.
As a result, traditional textile dyeing methods equate to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If no action is taken, the textile industry will contribute more than 2.5 gigatons of CO2 before 2050.
Unfortunately, the environmental damage does not stop there. Both pre-treatment and post-dyeing processes – such as washing and reduction clearing - are major contributors to pollution. When the water has been mixed with industry dyes, it produces wastewater that is discharged untreated, often containing unused dyes, fixatives, and toxic chemicals that contaminate ecosystems.
Textile dyeing is estimated to account for 20% of global industrial wastewater, with a single load of polyester clothing releasing up to 700,000 microplastic fibres into waterways. This means that, regardless of the season - even on the hottest days - textile dyeing continues to pollute our water systems.
Chennai Perungudi, India 2021
Summer Shades, Smarter Solutions
While traditional textile dyeing is as energy hungry as it is wasteful, the industry is witnessing a new horizon with a smarter solution. With sustainability becoming a core imperative across the textile supply chain, clean-tech innovations are stepping in to reimagine how colour is applied to fabrics. Among the most promising of these innovations is digital textile dyeing, a process that radically reduces water, chemical, and energy consumption by applying dye directly to the fabric surface with pinpoint accuracy. Enabling textile manufacturers to produce summer shades using smarter solutions.
We at Alchemie Technology are proud to be leading this transformation. Our proprietary digital dyeing platform jets microscopic dye droplets, just 10 microns in diameter, at high speed onto the fabric. Unlike traditional methods that rely on vast quantities of water and lengthy processing, our Endeavour™ system uses droplet velocity and precision to achieve deep, even colour penetration without the environmental burden.
The result? You get to wear brilliant, lasting colours, without wearing the cost of water pollution, energy waste, or chemical overuse. With Alchemie, colour doesn't come at the planet’s expense.
Colour That Pops in Every Drop
Our full-scale production Endeavour™ system is changing how the industry dyes textiles, bringing such precision to industrial volumes. Our proprietary nozzle technology in Endeavour™ can deliver 270 million dye droplets per second, resulting in 1.2 billion digitally defined droplets per linear metre of fabric. Each 10-micron droplet is precisely placed where needed, and only in the amount required. Thereby not only minimising waste but also offering unmatched reproducibility, enabling brands and textile manufacturers to maintain consistent colour standards across global production facilities.
This level of precision means no oversaturation, minimal excess dye, and no need for traditional downstream processes like reduction clearing or soaping - steps usually required to improve colour fastness in conventional methods. With Endeavour™, you get exceptional colour fastness (≥4/5), brilliant vibrancy, and consistent quality, right from the first drop.
Even better, our system is dye-agnostic, meaning there are no restrictions on colours or dyestuffs. We work with a wide range of commercially available dye chemistries, giving you the flexibility to deliver any shade, on any fabric, without compromising performance or sustainability.
Complementing Endeavour™ is our lab-scale Discovery system, already in use by textile manufacturers to build reliable, recipe-to-production dye libraries. By applying over 20 million precise droplets to an A5-sized fabric swatch, Discovery enables fast, accurate colour matching and formulation - ensuring speed, precision, and repeatability across global supply chains.
Sustainable Summer Colours
As the fashion industry welcomes summer colours, it must also confront the environmental impact of traditional textile dyeing – a process responsible for enormous water consumption, energy use, and widespread chemical pollution.
Ready to bring digital dyeing to your manufacturing?
Get in touch with us at enquiries@alchemietechnology.com to learn how you can implement Alchemie’s technology in your production line.
