Colored fabrics are attractive to everyone; almost every industrial dye process involves a solution of a dye in water, in which the fabrics are dipped or washed. After dying a batch of fabric, dye factories dump huge quantities of dye effluent into rivers. Most countries require factories to treat dye effluent before it is dumped.

Responsible dye manufactures are investigating ways to treat their dye effluent with organic materials and bacteria, rather than chemical treatments, and improve dye manufacture and processing to minimize hazardous chemicals used.

The focus of this article is to control the waste of water from our daily actions of washing such colored fabrics.

Some dyes bleed slightly every time you wash a garment, even though the color of the garment does not seem to change. Clothes whose colors run should be washed separately from others or washed with articles of like color. But this process of separately washing clothes wastes a lot of water.

To reduce water wastage,

1.   The cloth can be dry-cleaned, but this is more expensive and chemical based.

2.   Avoid washing in hot water.

3.   Avoid prolonged soaking, detergents and bleaches as these increase the release of dye

4.   People add salt or vinegar to the wash water in an effort to "set" dyes that run. Doing this may reduce dye loss by reducing the alkalinity and thus the cleaning power of the wash water, but does not actually cause any color to "set".

Testing Colorfastness to Laundry Products is not easy at the time of shopping. Buying from reliable shops will however help by reducing our efforts of washing separately and also save water. Some dyes will run in a solution of water and detergent but not in plain water; some will bleed in hot water but not warm. Some will bleed in a pretreatment solution or in bleach but would not run in a solution of detergent and water. 

However a simple test at the time of shopping by rubbing a wet cotton swab or a wetted white handkerchief over the colors in the fabric and observing the transfer of color to the cotton swab or kerchief may reveal if the color will run in plain water. 

So please take care our wear does not strain our lifeline on Earth - Water