Dr. Yiqi Yang,
Charles Bessey Professor
Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design
Department of Biological Systems Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 234 GNHS Bldg, Lincoln, NE 68583-0802
E-mail: yyang2@unl.edu
We report our efforts to diminish the use and/or discharge of toxic chemicals in dyeing and recycle dyes
and fibers from waste and afterlife textiles. Textile industry has been considered a major contributor to
environmental problems, including discharge of dyes, salts and other chemicals from wet processing
mills, and generation of more than 100 million tons of waste and afterlife materials mostly ended in
landfills. Although much effort has been made, few are truly conducive to better practice, mainly due to
the unaffordable costs, non-desirable quality, and creation of new pollutants. We have some
encouraging results in batch dyeing to reduce discharges of salts and dyes using a green dual phase
dyeing system. We also have demonstrated the feasibility of using natural colorants from agricultural
wastes for textiles. We are the first to prove that fiber-to-fiber recycling can be cheaper than
conventional production with both fibers and dyes being recycled from complicated systems, such as
polyester/cotton blends with both disperse and reactive dyes.
