The Impact of Fast Fashion
What are your thoughts on fast fashion, including its products, prices, and industry quality?
I’ve recently discovered the environmental impact and massive drawbacks of fast fashion. The unethical contributions to our society and planet are constantly rising, making this industry a slippery slope. However, some fast fashion corporations uphold their CSR–corporate social responsibility–and attempt to simultaneously improve environmental and economic issues. The problem arises when these corporations don’t fully maintain their messaging.
For example, Shein. The fast fashion retailer was founded in 2008 and became the world’s largest fashion retailer in 2022. Shein is known for its fun, stylish clothing for incredibly cheap prices. But what is the overall cost of this company?
When visiting Shein’s website, you see the front page of everything they offer. Clothing, accessories, limited holiday editions, you name it. One thing that is not advertised, yet is still accessible, is their sustainability homepage at the bottom of their homepage. This outlines their efforts to improve quality production for their employees and the planet. Although they may support the initiatives they claim, I do not feel like they enhance our fashion industry or environment, they only contribute negatively to it.
Shein’s environmental initiatives
Decarbonize their Supply Chain by reducing greenhouse carbon emissions by 2030.
Source Responsible Materials by ensuring constructed garments contain at least 30% preferred materials–recycled and reused deadstock fabrics.
Protect Biodiversity and Animal Welfare by identifying and understanding the sources of their materials.
Visually, their initiatives sound great. They recognize the need for improvement and attempt to problem-solve for a better economic and environmental outcome. However, they’re not meeting the requirements to solve their unsustainable product production, high waste production, labor exploitation, and chemical use. This is a perfect example of Shein not following its CSR and finding loopholes to promote a safe environment without the implementation to enact such claims.
As the fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world, Shein is leading in fast fashion. Shein’s products are composed of synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, which emit high amounts of CO2 emissions through production and take anywhere from 50-200 years to decompose. Additionally, microplastics and high amounts of chemicals from the dyeing process pollute the environment and local water systems, especially in Brazil and China where most of Shein’s products are made. There’s no doubt that Shein’s production practices are unethical and environmentally harmful, making it a significant contributor to global warming.
Let’s not forget about Shein’s labor exploitation, making people work in dangerous and uncomfortable positions for 12+ hours a day, seven days a week, while being severely underpaid. As Shein has over 10,000 employees and ships about one million items per day, employees must dedicate their lives to working in Shein’s production factories just to earn a living wage. In China, these working conditions violate many regulations in Chinese labor laws, yet nothing is being done to solve this issue.
Today, Shein is reportedly worth over $60 billion. I suspect a major reason for this is because their labor workers are severely underpaid and the company’s dismissal for enacting proper initiatives to reduce enviromental pollution. Shein ultimately does not uphold their CSR; however, its production output would be more ethical and sustainable if it did. While Shein’s products may be trendy and affordable, the ongoing harm the company causes to its workers and the environment significantly outweighs any perceived benefits. If we want to enact change to support labor workers and reduce CO2 emissions, stop purchasing from Shein. Before we know it, our environment will be ruined by the demand for fast fashion.
The featured photo is by Pano Pictures.
