Nature’s Painters: Making Sustainable Colors with Microbes
Source: https://www.labiotech.eu/in-depth/sustainable-colors-microbes/
Author: Helen Albert
The production of textile dyes and food colorants can have a big environmental footprint. Biotech startups are rising to the challenge by engineering bacteria, fungi, and algae to sustainably produce natural colors. Eight years ago, University of Cambridge researcher Jim Ajioka was in Nepal helping to produce a biosensor to detect arsenic in drinking water and was shocked at how poor the water quality was in the region.“In Kathmandu, all of the textile industry just dumps its waste straight into the water and into the river, there’s almost no regulation,” “The other place that I went to was Dhaka in Bangladesh, and again, it’s exactly the same problem.”Ajioka told. Around 300 million people work in the fashion industry, many of whom are low-paid workers in developing countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. Chemical dyes used in the industry are often toxic. Not only do they come from unsustainable sources, but many workers are at increased risk for skin diseases and cancer from regular exposure to these dyes.