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A pair of blue jeans looks simple. The colour feels familiar, even harmless. But the deep blue of denim sits at the end of a long industrial chain, and the risks in that chain are not all carried by the finished garment. Most of them sit upstream: in chemical manufacturing, in dye preparation, in dyehouses, in wastewater streams and in the communities and ecosystems that live with the consequences. That is the first important thing to understand about indigo toxicity. The pro

Based in Copenhagen, NordicBlue ApS developed the project’s core concept: fully biobased, enzymatic solutions to replace fossil-based indigo and harsh reducing agents in denim dyeing. In GREENDIGO, NordicBlue leads the development of enzyme‑based processes that turn renewable raw materials into ready‑to‑use blue dye precursors for denim, and works to scale these up from the lab to industrially relevant processes in line with the EU’s Safe and Sustainable by Design framework.

At the heart of GREENDIGO is a shared ambition to help transform denim dyeing into a safer and more sustainable process. Leading the project’s work on safety and sustainability assessment is Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (UNIVE), whose team brings deep expertise in environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology, exposure assessment and life cycle-based sustainability evaluation. As GREENDIGO develops a new bio-based approach to indigo dyeing, UNIVE plays a central role in ensuring

Indigo is one of the oldest colorants in human history, but it is also a remarkably sophisticated molecule from a chemical point of view. Its enduring importance comes from a rare combination of properties: a strong and characteristic blue-violet color, excellent photostability, low water solubility and a reversible redox chemistry that makes it suitable for vat dyeing. Those same properties explain why indigo became the defining dye of denim and why it remains central to tex

Few materials have travelled as far, culturally and geographically, as denim. Today it is worn everywhere, by almost everyone, but denim began as a hard-wearing fabric valued for one simple reason: it lasted. The fabric itself is generally linked to Europe. Denim is a durable twill-woven cloth with coloured warp threads and white filling threads, and that its name is said to derive from the French phrase serge de Nîmes. The related term “jeans” is commonly associated with Gen

On 13–14 April 2026, the GREENDIGO consortium held its first in-person meeting in Copenhagen, hosted by NordicBlue at the BioInnovation Institute. The meeting brought together all project partners for two days of discussion, planning and exchange as the consortium begins work on a new approach to sustainable denim dyeing. GREENDIGO aims to transform conventional indigo dyeing by developing a fully enzymatic, biobased process that can reduce reliance on toxic chemicals and sup