Publisher's Synopsis
Natural dyes are dyes derived from animal or plant material without any chemical treatment. They are obtained from sources like flowers, leaves, insects, bark roots etc.; however, they are not readily available and involve an extraction process. In prehistoric times, natural colourants were usually obtained from berries, blossoms, barks and roots. They were applied to the fibre without any pre-treatment of the dye-material or the textile. In the middle of the nineteenth century, introduction of synthetic dyes marked the decline in the use of natural dyes. The use of natural dyes will almost certainly make the fabric more expensive, firstly, because large quantities of land and raw material are required to obtain the same depth of color that could be obtained from a synthetic dye - although the amount of energy needed to extract oil from the ground and convert it into useable chemicals for synthetic dyestuff is probably very high. Also, both growing and applying the dyes are time-consuming - natural dyes take typically at least twice as long as synthetic dyes to get a result, and using natural dyes on vegetable fabric will be more costly still, as vegetable fibers are more resistant to taking up good strong colours than animal fibers are, and slower, longer treatments often give better results. One of the most pressing issues today is the lack of fresh drinking water, and as one of the most polluting industries, textiles - and especially the dyeing of textiles - is responsible for many instances of pollution making fresh water undrinkable. In the worst cases, communities have to use polluted water to drink, wash clothes, bathe and irrigate crops and the toxins they're exposed to can have catastrophic effects. Even in those instances where water treatment is in place, toxic sludge is a byproduct of the process.
