Shein Is Struggling to Clean Up Its Dirty Image

Ultra-fast-fashion giant Shein has poured millions of dollars into combatting its reputation as fashion’s chief climate villain. So far, the return on that investment is not looking good.

The company’s latest sustainability report, published on Friday, showed its planet-warming emissions jumped 23 percent last year to hit 26 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That gives Shein the dubious honour of fashion’s worst polluter for the second year in a row — at least among companies that disclose any data on their environmental impact. Its carbon footprint is higher than that of rival fast-fashion giants Zara-owner Inditex and H&M Group combined, and its overall environmental impact is growing faster than its sales.

To be sure, such comparisons are imperfect. Businesses calculate their emissions in different ways and disclose varying amounts of information. Still, companies are increasingly reporting against the same sets of international standards.

The issue is an increasingly pressing one for Shein. The company’’s hefty environmental impact is one of several controversies that have dogged its efforts to go public and helped fuel rhetoric that has made it a target in America’s trade war against China (where Shein was founded and still makes most of its products, even though it is now headquartered in Singapore).

Increasingly protectionist European regulators are also taking direct aim at the company’s business model. Last week, France moved towards introducing an anti-fast-fashion law that would ban companies like Shein from advertising and impose a “sin tax” style penalty as high as €10 ($11.52) per item on particularly polluting products.

To combat the criticism, Shein has pledged to do more to curb its impact, made ostentatious commitments to fund circularity initiatives and invested heavily in lobbying. It rejects the label “fast fashion,” preferring to style its business as “on demand,” reflecting an uber efficient model that the company says minimises waste and environmentally costly overproduction.

But the numbers in its latest sustainability report tell an awkward story for Shein, which last month joined dozens of fashion’s biggest brands in aligning its emissions targets with standards set by the world’s chief arbiter of such things, the Science Based Targets Initiative.

By the end of the decade, Shein says it will slash emissions from its own operations by 42 percent and cut emissions generated by manufacturing and shipping (where most of the industry’s impact takes place) by 25 percent.

Achieving that will require a dramatic reversal in the company’s current performance. Last year, its decarbonisation efforts succeeded in squeezing out nearly one million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, but its overall footprint still grew by nearly five million tonnes.

Shein said it has stepped up implementation of key sustainability initiatives over the last year, but acknowledged there is more work to be done.

Below, see the company’s impact by the numbers.