review · Heliyon
Natural dyes have a long history of use across textiles, food, and other materials, offering sustainable, non-toxic, and affordable alternatives to synthetic colourants. Although synthetic dyes remain widely used because of their wide colour range, colour fastness, and ease of application, they pose considerable health and environmental hazards. Plant species provide a broad spectrum of colours and properties suitable for the textile, printing, cosmetic, and food sectors. However, despite many plants being proposed as dye sources, systematic exploration, detailed chemical analysis, and practical application data remain limited. Research highlights several promising plant groups and indigenous species that merit deeper investigation to establish their viability as commercial sources of natural dyes.
Synthetic dyes are heavily utilised across global manufacturing, but their toxic impacts create severe environmental and health risks. Shifting toward plant-based dyes could provide safer, renewable alternatives for consumer goods such as clothing and food. Understanding which indigenous plants yield viable colourants helps guide sustainable sourcing and reduces reliance on harmful synthetic chemicals.
This work points to opportunities for the textile, food, cosmetic, and printing industries seeking bio-based colourants. The research remains at an early stage, as comprehensive chemical characterisation and standard extraction methods are still lacking for most candidate species. Industrial uptake will require further applied testing to validate the performance, safety, and scalability of dyes sourced from promising indigenous plants.
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Natural dyes have been used for centuries for coloring textiles, food, and other materials. Synthetic dyes are particularly popular due to their ease of use, wide range of available colors, and fastness. However, their usage comes with significant environmental and health challenges. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in natural dyes due to their eco-friendliness, ready availability, affordability, non-toxicity, and sustainability. Hence, natural dyes are fast gaining popularity as better alternatives to synthetic dyes. Nature is blessed with a rich diversity of plant species with varying colors and properties which can be harnessed in textile, printing, cosmetics, and food industries. This paper presents a comprehensive review on natural and synthetic dyes with particular focus on their history, properties, classification, extraction methods, applications, and health challenges. Although many plants have been suggested as potential sources of natural dyes, there is insufficient information on their exploration and application. Additionally, chemical analyses of these dyes have not been extensively done. Overall, the results of studies conducted so far identified a number of promising taxa for further investigation as plant-based dyes with many indigenous plants as potential sources of natural dyes.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33646
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