Australia's Science Agency "The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation" (CSIRO) is working on cotton plants that grow with an array of natural colors rather than the usual plain white, which requires environmentally problematic dying.
[The cotton is] the product of CSIRO plant breeders dedicated to producing better, sustainable natural fibres that will hopefully one day lead to wrinkle-free, naturally dyed, stretchy cotton to outperform synthetic fabrics.
Colleen MacMillan leads the team of scientists who have cracked cotton's molecular colour code, adding genes to make the plants produce a colour.
Cotton grown without a need to dye it later can have significant environmental advantages.
While cotton is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable, it still needs to be dyed, and the use of sometimes harmful chemical dyes is considered a blot on the industry's environmental copybook.
Particularly significant is the CSIRO team's work to breed naturally black cotton to replace black dyes, which are regarded as the most polluting of textile colours.
The team is also working on wrinkle-free cotton varieties.
The textile industry is considered "the second-most polluting in the world" and clothes are not typically environmentally friendly. Natural cotton clothing breaks down in landfills in as little as three months, but Australian lingerie designer Stephanie Devine notes that, on average
60 per cent of our clothes are actually made of polyester, which lasts 200 years in landfill, and we typically only use natural fibres in 6 per cent of our clothing.
Synthetic biology vs synthetic textiles, would you wear genetically engineered clothing?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:49AM
Now we just need some minecraft style coloured sheep!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:52AM
Why do white sheep eat more than black sheep? Answer left as exercise for khallow.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:48AM
There was a podcast or something about 10 years ago (NPR?) about the costs of environmental regulations, with an example of cloth factories (in some Scandinavian country?) trying to produce environmentally-friendly dyes with a criterion of "using substances that if you ate them, you would 'gain' [ed - some unusual word in this context] health instead of sickness."
When they did, they produced/matched their entire current palette using substances that at a first pass met this condition, and could additionally get rid of a lot of the equipment/setups they had in place to prevent people from touching/breathing the dyes, saving them money and decreasing the health risks to their workers. Additionally, I think they mentioned they could also do away with dealing with environmental hazards associated with disposal of scrap cloth.
The single color they couldn't match in this way was black.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:51AM (3 children)
Wrinkle free? Why do you hate grunge?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 28 2020, @08:08PM (2 children)
I clicked the link to mention "wrinkle free". None of you younger people likely remember clothing before "wash and wear" and "wrinkle free" came along. I recall reading labels as a much younger man, because the old clothing was impossible.
I know how to iron my clothes, but I sure don't want to spend time doing it. You can spend a couple hours ironing a week's worth of uniforms. (unless you have access to a steam press - ten minutes tops!)
My fire retardant clothing is a step backward - you MUST shake them out, smooth them, fold them, and stack neatly, immediately after they finish washing/drying. If not, they look positively horrible. But, way back in the days of my youth, clothing wasn't even that good. No matter what, you had to iron everything, or look like a bum.
Being a housewife and mother back then had to suck a lot. I don't think my mom had time for much more than cooking, doing laundry, washing dishes, and starting over again. Wash and wear clothing actually got her some time outside the home!
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Monday June 29 2020, @04:03AM
50 years ago, the key was to use a clothes dryer and remove the clothes from the machine immediately when it stopped moving, then hang them up. The tumble-drying meant micro-scale wrinkles everywhere, so they weren't really noticeable. Ironing gave a slightly better appearance, but meant that the clothes were a bit stiffer. A mistake in ironing technique resulted in a crease in the wrong place, fixable by dampening the crease and re-ironing. Really bad ironing could singe the fabric.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @12:40PM
They had clothing back then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @11:25AM (3 children)
If they can develop black cotton without dyes, the price of black clothing would plummet to levels where everyone could be a Goth.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @12:17PM (2 children)
Ehhh, making black cotton is easy, just wear a white shirt and spend some time working under greasy old cars.
As part of the development process, I hope the inventors compare toxicity of the new GMO colored cotton with normally dyed cotton. Just because it grew in some color doesn't automatically give it a pass on being nasty against skin...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @12:26PM (1 child)
This is a problem I never heard anyone having except you.
Cotton is considered quite comfortable by just about everybody.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @01:27PM
Two different things: Yes, cotton is usually comfortable.
Nasty against skin = skin reaction (allergic, etc) to the dye chemicals (or grown-in colorants). Possibly made worse when wet or sweaty?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bussdriver on Sunday June 28 2020, @04:09PM (3 children)
Cotton is HORRIBLE to the environment! This is like saying Ethanol is green gas. The amount of non-salt water is a huge problem as is the farming of it. Sure if you could cap the global population to 1 billion and this wouldn't be a big issue... (you could do far more good working on shaming people for procreation than messing up nature with releasing ignorant DNA Hacks upon the world. Yes, you could also boost education but that is harder.)
HEMP is way better than cotton in every way but comfort... they have processing that helps greatly but making that cheap and green is where we need more efforts and making it more effective. Bamboo is another one. Maybe it's never quite as good but then one can work on making the harm of cotton known in some ways that make the alternatives look better; since people don't make decisions on 1 factor alone (and rarely rationally either.)
Also-- there are microplastics which are largely from clothing and we don't use much 100% cotton; hardly any hemp or rayon either. How about finding solutions to adding forever plastics to everything?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @04:16PM (1 child)
>> HEMP is way better than cotton in every way but comfort...
Found the SJW!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2020, @05:03PM
> Found the SJW!
Found the loser neo-Nazi from 4-Chan!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 28 2020, @09:04PM
Unless I'm missing something, that would require amending the Flammable Fabrics Act. As I understand it, U.S. law requires children's sleepwear to be made of synthetic fabric.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:51PM
I seem to remember seeing naturally coloured cotton a decade or two ago. The shades they had achieved were light beige and light green. Naturally coloured in that they selectively cross-bred the cotton plants instead of genetically engineering them. Apparently the cotton species isn't necessarily pure white. No added dyes, neither during growing nor after.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Monday June 29 2020, @04:10AM (1 child)
Let me know when they can genetically engineer plaid.
(Score: 1) by BeaverCleaver on Monday June 29 2020, @10:14AM
Done. That pattern is woven in.
Or did I just get wooshed? :-)