A greener approach to finishing fabrics

Taylor Kanipe, a fourth-year PhD student at North Carolina State University in the US, is on a mission to develop a way of treating cotton fabrics that is more environmentally friendly and safer for the wearer. Alongside lab leader Richard Venditti, an expert on plant-based resources, Kanipe is working on a method that chemically alters seed oil from the cotton plant to create an alternative to current finishing agents based on formaldehyde or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Kanipe presented the work at the American Chemical Society’s fall meeting in Washington, DC.