The Metrics of Sustainable Fashion Were Built for Earth — What Happens When We Leave for Space?

Image by Nate Holland on Unsplash

I occupy an unusual position when I think about this question.

As an aerospace engineer who has worked in the space sector, I understand what the environment beyond Earth demands from materials and systems. As the editor of a fashion magazine, I spend significant time in conversation with textile designers, scholars, and researchers who are grappling with one of the most complex sustainability challenges of our era — what it means to make clothing responsibly on a planet that is running out of patience with how we treat it.

These two worlds do not often speak to each other. But they should. And the reason they should is that humanity is — genuinely, not metaphorically — preparing to live beyond Low Earth Orbit. Permanent lunar presence is being engineered right now. The conversations about what humans will wear, how those garments will be produced, how they will be maintained, and what happens to them at end of life are beginning. And if we do not ask the sustainability questions at the beginning of that conversation, we will find ourselves asking them too late — just as we did on Earth.

First — What Does the Fashion Industry Actually Do to This Planet?

Before asking what sustainable fashion looks like in space, it is worth being precise about what the problem is on Earth, because the metrics matter enormously when you transplant them to an environment where the context is completely different.

According to Business Insider, the fast fashion industry is, by most credible estimates, responsible for approximately 10 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions annually — more than international aviation and maritime shipping combined. It is the one of the largest consumers of the world’s water supply. Textile dyeing and treatment is responsible for global industrial water pollution, releasing heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, and endocrine-disrupting compounds into waterways that ecosystems and communities depend on. Synthetic fibres — polyester, nylon, and the blends — shed microplastics with every wash cycle, which enter waterways, ocean systems, and eventually the food chain. And at end of life, an estimated 85 percent of all textiles produced globally end up in landfill or incinerated, with a negligible amount successfully recycled into new fibres of comparable quality.

Kriti Magazine Handloom Edit 2025

₹449.00

Buy Now

The sustainability metrics that the industry has developed in response to this crisis are framed around these specific harms — carbon footprint of production, water consumption and contamination, chemical toxicity, biodegradability of fibres, recyclability of garments, and the social and labour conditions embedded in global supply chains.

These are the right metrics for Earth. But here is the question that keeps me thinking: when the soil, the water, and the atmosphere are either absent, chemically alien, or so scarce that every molecule of them is a life-support resource — what do those metrics even mean?

The Environment Changes Everything About What Sustainability Means

Consider biodegradability — one of the most discussed properties in sustainable textile design today. On Earth, a biodegradable fibre returns to the soil through microbial decomposition, completing a material cycle that is, in principle, closed and regenerative. This is a meaningful sustainability metric because Earth has the biological and chemical infrastructure to process organic decomposition, and because that decomposition returns nutrients to an ecosystem that depends on them.

On the Moon, there is no soil microbiome. There are no decomposers. There is no biological cycle into which an organic material can return. A biodegradable fibre on the lunar surface does not biodegrade — it simply sits there, unchanged, because the process that defines its sustainability credential on Earth does not exist in that environment. Biodegradability as a metric becomes meaningless, or worse, misleading.

Now consider chemical dyes — another major sustainability focus in terrestrial fashion. The harm caused by synthetic dyes on Earth is primarily expressed through water pollution — dyes and their precursor compounds entering rivers, groundwater, and marine environments, where they are toxic to aquatic life and disruptive to aquatic ecosystems. But in a sealed habitat on the Moon or in a spacecraft, water is not a dispersal medium for chemical waste. It is a closed-loop life support resource. The water is recycled, filtered, and reused. A dye compound that enters the water system in a lunar habitat does not disperse into a river. It cycles through the habitat’s water reclamation system, potentially accumulating, potentially compromising water quality, and potentially becoming a life support problem rather than an ecological one. The harm is real — but the mechanism and the metric are entirely different.

And consider waste at end of garment life — currently the most intractable problem in terrestrial fashion sustainability. On Earth, the problem is volume — billions of garments disposed of annually into landfill systems that are overwhelmed by the throughput. In a spacecraft or a habitat operating under closed-loop resource constraints, the problem is not volume. It is material. Every kilogram of mass launched to the Moon represents an enormous energy and financial cost. A garment that reaches end of life is not simply a waste management problem — it is a potential material resource in an environment where material is among the most precious things available. Upcycling and material recovery in space are not ethical choices. They are engineering necessities.

So What Should the Metrics Actually Be?

This is where I find myself uncertain — and I think that uncertainty is the honest and correct response to a this challenging question.

If biodegradability does not translate, what replaces it? Perhaps the relevant metric is material longevity — the ability of a fabric to perform its function across the longest possible operational lifetime, reducing the frequency of replacement and therefore the demand for new material production and transport from Earth. A garment that lasts ten years in a sealed habitat environment is categorically more sustainable in space than a garment designed to last two years and biodegrade, because the former reduces total material throughput in an environment where throughput is the constraint.

If water pollution is not the primary harm vector for dyes in a closed habitat, what is? Perhaps it is off-gassing — the release of volatile organic compounds from dye chemicals into a sealed atmospheric system where air quality is a life support parameter. A dye that is perfectly acceptable from an aquatic toxicology standpoint on Earth might be completely unacceptable in a sealed habitat if it contributes to atmospheric contamination. The toxicological assessment framework changes entirely.

If waste volume is not the primary end-of-life problem, what is? Perhaps it is material recoverability — the ability to break a garment down into its constituent fibres or polymers and reintroduce those materials into a production cycle that can manufacture new textiles, insulation, structural materials, or other useful products within the habitat. This points toward a monomaterial design philosophy — garments constructed from a single fibre type or polymer system, with no blended fabrics that make separation and recovery technically difficult, as a primary sustainability principle for space fashion.

And then there are the questions that have no terrestrial analogue at all. How does prolonged exposure to elevated radiation levels affect fibre degradation and the potential release of breakdown products into a closed environment? How does microgravity affect the way fibres move, shed, and accumulate as particulates in air filtration systems? How does the psychological dimension of clothing — its role in identity, expression, comfort, and mental wellbeing — interact with the documented psychological pressures of long-duration confinement, and should that psychological function be considered a sustainability parameter in its own right?

The Deeper Question

What I find most fascinating about this line of thinking is what the process of asking these questions reveals about sustainability thinking on Earth.

When you remove the familiar environmental context and are forced to rebuild the concept of sustainability from first principles, you discover how much of our current sustainability framework is contextually specific rather than universally applicable. Biodegradability, water footprint, soil contamination — these are metrics calibrated to Earth’s specific chemistry, biology, and ecology. They are not definitions of sustainability. They are expressions of sustainability in one particular environmental context.

In space, that context changes completely. And if we are going to build a human presence beyond Earth that does not replicate the extractive, wasteful, and ecologically destructive patterns of how we have lived on this planet — and we have a rare and unique opportunity to choose differently, precisely because that presence does not yet exist — then the work of defining what sustainability means in that context needs to begin now, before the patterns are established and the habits are formed.

The fashion industry arrived late to its own sustainability reckoning on Earth. The space fashion conversation is just beginning. The question is whether we have the intellectual honesty and the foresight to ask the hard questions before the mistakes are made, rather than after.

Also, I know how exciting the past days have been with the Artemis II mission, ISRO completing a significant test for Gaganyaan and the commercial companies raising the bar for what’s possible, and I hear a lot of you are looking to find your footing in the space sector. Excitement is great especially when it is accompanied by direction. So I am opening up the 1:1 Space Career Coaching Sessions again. Check it out and book if you need mentorship. If you face any trouble with booking or receiving link, please email me.

Looking forward to interesting conversations with you!

Ad Astra,

Sumana.

Lifestyle and Cosmos Blog by Sustainaverse explores ideas across sustainable fashion, conscious living, digital wellness, entrepreneurship, and the space economy. Sign up free to Lifestyle and Cosmos Newsletter