Life cycle assessment of blue herbal dye
Student name: Ms Asprit Kaur
Guide: Dr Suresh Jain
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: True Tone Inc., Ahmedabad
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Arun Baid
Abstract: Use of chemical dyes in the textile dyeing is major environmental hotspot in the
textile supply chain and as more and more people are becoming aware about the
same use of natural dyes, herbal dyes are gaining momentum. This study tries to
evaluate the manufacturing process of blue herbal dyes in order to identify the
hotspots in the supply chain, so that the process of making herbal dyes can be
made more sustainable and it can be used as an alternative to chemical dye.
In this study life cycle assessment has been used as a tool to identify the hotspots
using SimaPro software and ReCiPe midpoint characterization method. The
results concluded that the agricultural stage has the maximum contribution to the
studied impact categories due to the use of diesel in farm operations, followed by
pre-processing stage which mainly contributed due to the use of liquefied
petroleum gas and minimum contribution is of processing stage which happens
in the industry boundary. Whatever contribution this stage had was due to the
use of natural sugar.
Additionally, carbon footprint of textile dyeing stage was calculated using
CCalc: carbon footprint calculator, to compare the dyeing process using
chemical and herbal dyes. Chemical dyeing was found to have three times higher
carbon footprint than herbal dyeing.
Keywords: Textile dyeing industry, herbal dyes, chemical dyes, life cycle assessment,
environmental hotspot, carbon footprint
