THE fashion industry has a golden opportunity to help clean up the planet.
Clothing manufacturers can use the leftover salt from irrigated fields when they
dye brightly coloured clothes, a scientist in California has discovered.
When fields are irrigated, the run-off water gets recycled and sprayed back
on to crops. But each time the run-off is recovered it contains a higher
concentration of salts than before, since the fresh water evaporates or is
sucked up by plants. Eventually the water becomes unusable, and farmers have to
dump it in huge ponds of brine. In California’s central valley for example,
600,000…
