BIOSPECTRA · Bio-inspired, Sustainable Plant-based Effects and Colours To Replace All Harmful Colourants

The €38bn colourant industry comes with extraordinary environmental and social costs. Produced using a wide range of metals, metal oxides, microplastics and petrochemical products, modern colourants are associated with huge greenhouse gas emissions (up to 27 kg CO2e / kg of synthetic dye), destructive and unethical mining, and long-term damage to the environment, biodiversity and human health. Many colourants are impossible to recycle, may take up to 500 years to biodegrade and cannot be sourced renewably. Consumer and regulatory pressure is driving industry to seek safer, more ethical, and more sustainable solutions without sacrificing the performance consumers are used to. It has proven impossible, however, to move away from traditional colourants due to a lack of suitable replacements. While existing ‘state-of-the-art’ colourants lie at the root of the problem, emerging solutions have failed to fully address the industry’s need for safe, sustainable and high-performance alternatives.Inspired by nature and backed by world-leading research, Sparxell has developed the world’s first plant-based colourants to rival the performance of today’s state of the art products. Our patent-protected technology is already proving revolutionary in the cosmetics and fashion industries (amongst many others), and we have partnered with some of the world’s largest brands to evaluate and trial our award-winning products. The BIOSPECTRA project will complete our development programme and facilitate the scale-up and market entry of our vivid, non-toxic, biodegradable and low carbon colourants.