Cotton Inc., aka the research and promotion company behind those “fabric of our lives” commercials, has collaborated with color and chemical specialist Archroma, to create the first ever textile dye derived from cotton plant residue.
After hearing about Archroma’s patented technology, EarthColors, an innovative method that uses agricultural waste to produce warm, rustic hues, Cotton Inc. challenged the Swiss chemists to use the byproducts from cotton harvesting and ginning to dye cotton fiber.
Cotton’s byproducts, which include burs, stems, immature bolls, lint, sticks, and leaves, are globally abundant, and EarthColors uses a sulfur base instead of the petrochemical base used by traditional textile dyes, which makes the cotton-derived colorant a far more environmentally-friendly option.
You can read more about cotton-dyed cotton over at Yahoo Finance.
