By Paul Hamilton, technical director, Regenex

We don’t talk that much on the blog about the origins of Regenex, and how we came to be in business.

You might be aware we use textile chemistry knowhow to figure out our ever-evolving methods of raising the deepest of stains from commercial linens. It’s a puzzle we never tire of.

I’m a Chartered Colourist meaning I’m educated, trained and very well versed in the business of dyeing. As such, my team and I can get colour – including marks, stains and ‘greying’ – out of fabric as well as adding it in.

Like a lot of people involved in sectors that draw heavily on our utilities, and therefore the planet, I have a keen eye on circularity and how we can collectively better.

So naturally I was at the Society of Dyers and Colourists’ UK Coloration and Finishing Conference this month talking about sustainability, environmental responsibility, new legislation and fresh ideas.

The textile sector is keenly aware of the need to go easy on the earth’s resources and the good news is that levels of innovation in this area in the UK and globally are gathering real momentum.

The bad news is that this is on the back of so many years of a heavy, global environmental toll, for which the story of the Aral Sea provides a heartbreaking illustration.

At the SDC conference, Archroma, a company that provides environmentally-safe chemicals for coloration processes talked about the Aral Sea – and really touched a room of industrial scientists and academics in West Yorkshire, 2,700 miles away.

The Aral Sea was the third largest lake in the world, with more than 1,000 islands, between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It began shrinking in the 1960s and by the 2010s it had more or less dried up into desert, having first split into four bodies of water.

So what happened? In short, the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation projects – leaky canals that wasted a lot of water along the way – to grow cotton as well as melons, rice and cereals.

Some efforts to replenish the water stock were abandoned and the saga is roundly regarded as one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.

Fish died off and so did the region’s fishing industry – as seen in this photo by Adam Harangozó via Wiki Commons, bringing unemployment and hardship. Huge quantities of fertiliser and pesticides on the land caused heavy pollution.

By 1988, Uzbekistan was the world’s largest exporter of cotton or “white gold” and today, cotton production is still Uzbekistan’s main cash crop.

The catastrophic situation caught a mainstream UK attention six years ago with Stacey Dooley’s influential BBC documentary Fashion’s Dirty Secrets which upped public consciousness on the harms of fast fashion and subsequently overconsumption of linen in industries including hospitality.

It certainly shows why companies like Archroma are working hard to find other, kinder ways of manufacturing. And why, on the legislative side of things, huge change is afoot for any business that deals in textiles, for example with EPR, or extended producer responsibility – the EU legislation that will involve businesses being charged for the costs associated with the end-of-life management of their products.

So while the story of the Aral Sea is desperately sad, there is hope. Lessons have been learned and attitudes are changing. Every little thing we all do to minimise cotton production, and the chemicals traditionally associated with it, will confine tales like this one to history.

Photo attribution: Adam Harangozó