This Organisation Extracts Natural Dyes From Plants And Plant Waste

Our clothes define us. They are a true reflection of our personality. The right outfit can make us feel confident and the wrong one can make us conscious of how we look. But did you know the colours in your outfit can affect your mood too? And not just your mood, the colours on your clothes also have an impact on your health and the planet's health. Most high-end fast fashion brands use synthetic colours, those made from chemicals. And when have chemicals been good for the human body? As chic as your outfit looks, wrapping yourself in chemicals is definitely not a good idea. And that is what Sodhani Biotech is trying to change.

Shaping the world of net-zero fashion, Sodhani Biotech is a young team promoting the oneness of our life with the environment and they do this by extracting colours from plants and plant waste. Knowledge about pigment and colour from natural resources helped Sidhant Sodhani start this organisation.

Sidhant was aware that the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry worldwide and he wanted to bring a change. Talking about his work, Sidhant Sodani, Founder of Sodhani Biotech said,

I met a couple of people from the US and Germany from a textile background and they were looking for natural dyes. My father was already in this business from 1992-1995. When I met these people in 2014, they explained to me about textiles and they thought this could one of the very big things in the coming years and asked if I would be interested in doing something in this field. That's how I thought of restarting the business.

Soon they realised the challenge of replacing chemical dyes with natural dyes. Mr Sodhani said,

The consumption of chemical dyes is so huge that if we will try to replace chemical dyes with natural dyes, we will end up cutting almost every tree on earth. We will be back to square one.

This is when Sodhani Biotech started working on waste products to make colours. For the last five years, they have been using waste like onion peels, pomegranate peels, and walnut shells, all sourced from local communities. Mr Sodhani said,

Most of these products are collected by companies, whom we have appointed, and they collect raw materials for us. There are certain products that are sourced from the East part of India, indigo majorly comes from down south, and there are a few products that come from the central part of India as well.

Once the company receives the product, a thorough check is done to assess the colour value and the pigment. The products go to the research and development department where the colour compound is checked, and once the product has met all the criteria, it is sent for colour extraction. What makes the process unique is that none of the raw materials used are a part of the food chain and are completely a waste. And by turning natural waste into wealth, Sodhani Biotech is dedicated to reducing the carbon footprint left by chemical dyes. Mr Sodhani explained,

The carbon footprint of natural dyes is around  60 per cent lower compared to chemical dyes. Secondly, most natural dyes have inherent anti-bacterial properties. People get bacterial or skin infections while wearing clothes that have hazardous or chemical dyes. You can use the same product for any kind of fibre or fabric like cotton, wool, silk, polyester and nylon. Any kind of fibre can be dyed using natural dyes.

Apart from dye extraction, the team at Sodhani Biotech also conducts workshops for people of all age groups. The workshops not only teach techniques for easy dyeing projects at home, but also the history and fundamentals of natural dyeing. The workshops also focuses on traditional block printing techniques, and participants are given DIY (do-it-yourself) kits making the experience all the more special. Vidya Prabhakar, one of the participants said,

We are leaving it forward for our children and we want to have something sustainable for them. There was this interesting video we saw where adults were given some colours, a box of crayons and they used all the colours in them to paint pictures but the children used grey and black because that's what they're seeing. These sustainable measures will help us leave a legacy for our children, a better world for them to live in.

Sahana Raghavan, another participant spoke about increasing carbon footprint and how natural dyes can help in some way. They said,

Increasingly there is a lot of pollution and we are leaving a really big carbon footprint on the world. So, having these natural dyes is one step towards reducing the footprint that we are leaving.

Now you know the benefits of naturally extracted dyes, not only for the body but the planet as well. As conscious consumers, we should be more curious about what our favourite brands are using to dye the clothes we are wearing. If it is sustainable only on paper or in reality too.