Nanoscience is Making Sustainable Fashion More Colorful

In September of 2024, scientists gathered in Tucson, Ariz., to discuss new ways to spark advances in the mining, design, manufacture, and disposal of materials needed to achieve a more sustainable and low-carbon energy system. This conference on Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials (SM3) and other “Scialog®” conferences (Science + dialogue) are part of the work of Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement (RCSA), with the aim to accelerate breakthroughs by stimulating intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community-building around a scientific theme of global importance.

As a conference outcome, grants are awarded to selected researchers to pursue high-risk, high-impact projects based on collaborative proposals from conference participants, which are then recommended by a scientific review panel and selected by funding sponsors.

The Kavli Foundation selected a project titled “Engineering plants and algae as dye-free alternatives to fossil-based textiles,” a research collaboration between R. Helen Zha of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Loretta Roberson of the Marine Biological Laboratory and Jaime Barros-Rios at the University of Missouri. This project seeks to find an alternative to the fossil-based pigments used in textiles, which can degrade into carcinogenic and genotoxic compounds, and create an environmental burden as part of the clothing and fashion industry, which is responsible for 5-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Pigments are interesting nanomaterials, but most synthetic dyes were not designed with sustainability in mind,” said Jeff Miller, nanoscience program officer at The Kavli Foundation. “This project seeks to go back to the basic science drawing board and reinvent pigments, but with sustainability as a central requirement. This process could be a model for all kinds of other materials as well.”

Plants and seaweed are attractive cost-effective biomass sources for textile manufacturing, as they grow quickly, absorb CO2 during growth, and are completely biodegradable. However, plant and macroalgae-based textiles still require dyeing processes that detract from their overall sustainability. This project aims to transform plant and algae materials for textile applications by “bioalloying” recombinant proteins into these materials at the molecular level. These coral-inspired proteins can impart intrinsic color and obliviate the need for separate dyeing processes.

The Kavli Foundation is partnering with RCSA to support this work, which was proposed during the inaugural year of this three-year Scialog® series.