The colourant industry is a major polluter globally, producing 20% of the world’s wastewater and consuming 800,000 tonnes of synthetic colourants annually. The discharge of coloured wastewater into global waterways has caused massive biodiversity loss, death and diseases including cancers, respiratory disease and skin diseases. The industry has been searching for sustainable colours yet is struggling to find viable alternatives. Current clean colourants aren’t scalable to meet the scope of demand nor the required performance standards.

To meet this market gap, researchers at Lite-1, a Vancouver-based company, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkley, the University of Toronto as well as the Verschuren Centre engineered a microbe to produce a black non-toxic pigment at commercially and economically viable scale.

A range of chromosomal and plasmid-based modifications as well as other innovations were necessary for successful high yield pigment production and to reduce downstream purification complexity.

This is a major technological step toward replacing widely used synthetic black dyes with a biodegradable, bio-manufactured alternative to reduce toxic dye discharge into waterways, lower carbon footprint of pigment manufacturing as well as improve worker safety in dye production environments.