Colour block: When it comes to water, can the textile industry clean up its act?

The fashion industry has its fair share of dirty secrets, but one of the lesser-known is how much it pollutes our waterways. Every year, garment factories use as much as 2 trillion gallons of water to dye clothes, and most of that water, now filled with harmful chemicals, flows untreated into rivers, streams and lakes. Those pollutants can turn rivers black, harm marine life and cause cancer. Macarena Cataldo, a chemical engineer based in Vancouver, has come up with an ingenious way to remove these contaminants before they even reach the water. In this episode, Cataldo talks to Manjula Selvarajah about the global water crisis, how her technology works and efforts to get major fashion brands to change their ways.

Featured in this episode:

Macarena Cataldo is the CEO and CTO of Viridis Research, which she co-founded in 2019 to solve various global water challenges by eliminating pollutants from water sources. She has a PhD in chemical engineering, and has spent more than 15 years applying electrochemistry to drinking and wastewater treatment working with the European Space Agency, the Metropolitan Water Company of Turin and others.

Further reading:

Asian rivers are turning black. And our colourful closets are to blame

Why colouring clothes has a big environmental impact

World enters era of “global water bankruptcy”

Water crisis in Chile: Are we close to day zero?

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