Dyeing of cotton and silk using vegetable kitchen waste: A step towards sustainability

Abstract

Vegetable wastes occur throughout the supply chain. Globally, around 20% loss occurs at consumer levels, of which post-harvest and food processing level wastages account for 80% share. Wastes pose environmental threats and call for the development of a model to recycle this unutilized waste in potential avenues. The study focuses on sourcing of vegetable & fruit kitchen waste and extracts the dyes from waste to create a concrete framework in managing the kitchen waste towards using it for textile dyeing. The study will compare microwave extraction and conventional extraction method (exhaustion) and dyeing processes in terms of depth of shade and hue. The present results have demonstrated that the affinity of vegetable kitchen waste material as a source of natural coloring agents for dyeing proteinic silk fabric is higher than cellulosic cotton fabric by using both conventional and microwave assisted dyeing. Compared to conventional the microwave-assisted extraction and dyeing technique is highly effective in terms of saving the processing time, energy, and resources. Other additional features about microwave is that it is cheaper, more economical, energy saving and thereby eco-friendly. Consumers believed as expressed in the opinion survey that this research idea is excellent and will help in reducing waste.