Fashion likes to talk about its climate footprint in terms of cotton fields, air freight and shop-floor energy. Much of the problem, however, sits earlier in the supply chain, at the point where fabric gets its colour. Dyeing and finishing are among the least visible stages of textile production, and among the most polluting. They are also the part the industry has done least to fix.
The scale of the problem is now better documented. In its Taking Stock of Progress Against the Roadmap to Net Zero 2025 report, published last year, the Apparel Impact Institute found that apparel sector emissions rose 7.5% in 2023 to reach 944 million tonnes, the first year-on-year increase since the institute began tracking the industry in 2019. Textile processing, which covers spinning, weaving, dyeing, washing and finishing, accounts for 55% of the sector’s total. The rise moves the industry away from its goal of halving emissions by 2030, not towards it.
Where The Emissions Actually Come From
Philippe Berlan, Chief Executive of the French green-chemistry company EverDye, puts dyeing’s share even higher. “Dyeing and finishing of textiles account for about 50% of the carbon emissions in the whole process,” he says, describing it as “the dead angle of the textile supply chain.” His point is that the harm is rarely seen, except in the occasional image of coloured rivers in India or China. The cause, he argues, is chemistry.
Conventional dyeing relies on petrochemical inputs, both to make the dye and to bind it to the fibre. That chemistry is inefficient. “You need to heat, to put a lot of energy to provoke this reaction,” Berlan says. Dye baths run at 70 to 130 degrees Celsius, demand chemical auxiliaries to speed the reaction, and are then released, often untreated. Dyeing alone accounts for around a fifth of industrial water pollution worldwide, on his figures.
A Different Chemistry
EverDye’s process, invented by co-founder and chief technology officer Amira Erokh, replaces the petrochemical base with bio-sourced feedstock and iron oxide for colour. The company synthesises a patented hybrid molecule: a positively charged biopolymer that is drawn to negatively charged, pre-bleached fibre by what Berlan calls magnetic attraction. As the fabric dries, the polymer bonds to the fibre. The reaction happens at room temperature, three to five times faster than conventional dyeing.
The claimed result is a 90% cut in energy use and, in countries with carbon-heavy grids, a comparable drop in the dyeing stage’s carbon footprint. Water use falls by around 30%, because the non-toxic output needs only rinsing rather than the soaping and washing conventional dyes require. EverDye measured the reductions through a life-cycle assessment of dyed fabric, from dye synthesis to finished cloth.
The technology covers cellulosic fibres including cotton, hemp, linen, viscose and lyocell. Polyester, which makes up more than half of global fibre use, is in development for late this year, with the jet-dyeing machinery used across much of the industry due by the end of 2026. Crucially, the process needs no new equipment in the dyeing mills, removing the capital-cost objection that stalls most manufacturing innovation.
The Scope 3 Blind Spot
Berlan’s wider argument is about where brands have put their effort. Most have addressed Scope 1 and Scope 2, the emissions from their own offices, shops and transport. Manufacturing, which sits in Scope 3, has barely moved. “It’s roughly 85% of the total footprint” for an apparel brand, he says, “and this is where the stake is really.” Analyses across the sector reach a similar conclusion, placing around 90% of fashion’s emissions in brands’ Scope 3.
The reason the manufacturing layer resists change, Berlan says, is cultural as much as technical. Fashion is “only driven by design and marketing and communication, with very few knowledge about what is happening in the layer of the industry.” Brands buy from manufacturers and trust what they are told, while manufacturers stay wary of anything that risks quality or cost. The result is a status quo that only a handful of well-resourced brands have the knowledge to challenge.
He is realistic about how change spreads. A startup needs only a few committed brands as early adopters, he argues, alongside a wider coalition of competing firms pushing in the same direction. Regulation may help: he points to EU moves towards digital product passports that would let consumers see how a garment was made, much as food labelling shifted buying habits.
Backing The Long Cycle
EverDye closed a 15 million euro Series A last year, twice oversubscribed. Berlan is candid about the contrast with software. Deep-tech chemistry runs on a 10-to-15-year development cycle, not the rapid fundraising of AI. The capital is going chiefly into people, more chemists specialising in colour and polymers, and into lab space to accelerate the company’s development programmes. An asset-light model, relying on subcontracting rather than owning factories, keeps the capital requirement down.
Berlan came to the problem after three decades in retail and fashion, including running the French retailer La Redoute. As a chief executive, he found himself stacking dozens of small actions for fractions of a percent in terms of environmental impact, unable to reach what he calls the heart of the problem. “I was very frustrated about that, not having the levers to change in depth this industry,” he says. He invested in EverDye as a business angel before taking the top job.
Teaching The Next Generation To See The Chemistry
The knowledge gap Berlan describes inside the industry starts earlier, in how designers are trained. EverDye’s argument is that fashion education still treats sustainability mainly as a question of design thinking, ethics and marketing. Recognising an eco-friendly approach as a selling point is a reasonable start, the company says, but the bigger shift is structural, in how designers are taught to think about production itself.
Future designers, on this view, need to understand how materials, manufacturing and environmental impact connect, and how a process like dyeing drives emissions and water use. Schools are not expected to turn designers into chemists. The aim is to make the next generation fluent enough to know why technical expertise belongs on the team.
Berlan explains: “Future creatives need to understand how materials, manufacturing and environmental impact intersect, and how specific processes like dyeing affects emissions and water use. Fashion schools are not expected to turn designers into chemists or engineers, but sustainability education must go beyond awareness and highlight the technical realities behind fashion’s environmental impact. Teaching why adding these talents to the team will enhance the multidisciplinary expertise is essential to building a genuinely sustainable fashion industry.”
That recognition is the same one the brands themselves have been slow to reach. The emissions sit in the Scope 3 manufacturing layer that brands understand least and control least, and the people designing the clothes are rarely taught to look there. Until brands treat that layer as their responsibility rather than their suppliers’, and until the studios feeding them learn to see it, the colour used on most garments will keep racking up the harm.
