But a shellfish-inspired solution could clean it up.
Photo image – Piyas Biswas/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Photo caption: A worker collects dyed fabric after drying it under the sun at a dyeing factory in Bangladesh.
Every year, the textile industry uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water to dye garments – enough to fill 2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. Most of this water, loaded with harmful chemicals and dyes, flows untreated into rivers and streams.
That’s why researchers at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), have created a new nanomaterial that they say can clean up these dyes and other pollutants from industrial wastewater.
The material consists of tiny sand-like grains, only visible to the naked-eye in clusters, which collect pollutants on their surfaces and in their pores, says Enas Nashef, project lead and a professor of chemical engineering at Khalifa University.
The nanomaterial consists of a substance called a polymer that mimics the “glue” that mussels use to stick themselves to rocks, combined with a solvent. Finding the right solvent was a challenge, says Nashef, because most solvents are toxic, but the team identified one which is both effective and, crucially, eco-friendly.
“If the thing you use will pollute the water, then what is the benefit?” he says.