A European research consortium has developed printing pastes made from agricultural and industrial waste that could offer textile manufacturers a lower-carbon, more sustainable alternative to fossil-based dyeing inputs, project leaders said, as the sector races to cut its reliance on petrochemical materials.
The project, known as “be@t,” is led by CITEVE, the Portuguese Technology Centre for the Textile and Clothing Industries, in partnership with textile maker Lameirinho and materials specialist CeNTI. Researchers said they had successfully converted residual materials from vineyards, biomass boilers and pine bark processing into colour-giving components suitable for use in industrial textile printing operations.
Augusta Silva, a textile engineer and innovation manager for printing and coating at CITEVE, said the approach was designed to solve several problems at once, including reducing fossil-based inputs in textile finishing and putting underused waste streams to industrial use.
“We were able to reduce the particle size of the waste materials to a level that made them compatible with rotary screen printing technology,” Silva said, referring to one of the most widely used printing methods worldwide.
The team used ball mills and knife mills to mechanically micronise vineyard prunings, pine bark and biomass ash without adding water, producing fine particles suitable for incorporation into printing pastes. The pastes themselves rely on chitosan and collagen, two biopolymers derived as by-products of the food industry, which the researchers said can function simultaneously as thickeners and binders. That dual role, they said, allows a single bio-based material to replace several fossil-derived additives typically required in conventional printing formulations while keeping production costs competitive.
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Industrial-scale trials found the materials met wash, rub and light fastness benchmarks, a threshold that has historically proven difficult for natural, plant-derived colorants to clear consistently. Silva said the biomass ash in particular performed strongly.
“The light fastness of the ash exceeds grade five, which is truly an excellent result for a mineral-based product,” she said, adding that some results exceeded requirements set by the project’s industrial partner.
The finished textiles also complied with Oeko-Tex Standard 100, an independent certification that screens for harmful substances, the researchers said, a compliance benchmark that many brands now require of suppliers seeking to market products as sustainably produced.
The technology has already drawn strong recognition from across the industry. It won the Techtextil Innovation Award 2026, presented at Techtextil, a leading international trade fair for technical textiles and nonwovens held in Frankfurt.
Silva pointed to pigment printing, which she said accounts for roughly half of global textile printing output and continues to gain share partly because it does not require post-print washing, lowering water use and environmental impact compared with other printing methods. The be@t process was built to align with that shift, combining pigment printing’s efficiency with bio-based raw materials and a systematic approach to waste valorisation, according to the project team.
CITEVE said it is finalising a European patent application, filed under number P2024.8 EP, while continuing further research into the long-term stability of the printing pastes and the storage stability of the residual materials used to make them. The consortium said it has already attracted interest from sectors beyond apparel and fashion, including automotive and healthcare, where demand for bio-based, high-performance materials is growing.
Researchers cautioned that a full replacement of fossil-based raw materials across the textile industry remains unlikely in the near term. But they said bio-based alternatives such as the be@t formulations are expected to play a substantially larger role in making textile production more resource-efficient in coming years, as manufacturers face mounting regulatory and consumer pressure to decarbonise supply chains and reduce their dependence on virgin petrochemical feedstocks and other fossil-derived textile inputs.