The mission of the Dutch company DyeCoo is to offer innovative dyeing techniques to the textile industry, thereby contributing to a sustainable future in terms of water use, energy consumption, CO2 emission and waste handling.

The textile industry uses massive amounts of water to dye its fabrics. On average, an estimated 100-150 liters of water is needed to process 1 kg of textile material. A lot of that water is polluted and ends up in the environment.

The DyeCoo technique prevents chemicals from making it into the environment. In addition, the process consumes considerably less energy, releasing less greenhouse gasses. Dyeing textiles also goes a lot faster, which is attractive in terms of costs. DyeCoo utilizes so-called ‘supercritical CO2’, meaning the gas is compressed under high pressure.

The technique is currently used to extract caffeine from coffee beans, for instance. DyeCoo is the first factory that manages to employ supercritical CO2 to dye textiles at commercial scale.

For now, polyester is the only fabric it can handle, but in the near future it will also be able to tackle cotton and synthetic materials. Brands like Nike no longer use water when dyeing their textiles, thanks to DyeCoo’s technique.