There was a time when flowers and plants were used to colour our fabrics, paints and make-up, before the time of man-made chemicals. Now it seems, with concerns about the environment, our reliance on oil, and the effect that chemicals are having on our health, it may be time to go back to using these colour-producing plants. In the southern French town of Lauris, in Europe’s only conservatory garden of such plants, Garance association botanists are working away at reviving this ancient art.
There is so much colour available from nature, it’s surprising that we ever looked anywhere else. The frescoes in Pompeii were coloured with dyes made from madder roots, the South American lipstick tree is still used to provide the orange colour for Buddhist monk’s robes in Asia, as well as the orange colour of the rind of Dutch cheese, and an Indian rose produces a soft peach colour used to colour cordials. But the oil-based synthetic colours are cheap and quick to produce, and we have lost many of the secrets of colour producing plants.
Natural dyes are still more expensive than synthetic ones, but as extraction techniques are developed and the demand for the natural dyes increases, the cost is coming down. It is also believed that the European Union’s Reach programme will force industry to reduce how many chemicals it uses and will therefore contribute to a return to vegetable-based dyes. Within the next 10 years, natural dyes could represent 3.0 percent of the global textile market.
Source: iafrica