This story was originally Featured in Grist and part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In 2023, fast-fashion giant SHEIN was everywhere. Planes crisscrossing the globe delivered parcels of ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencer “#sheinhaul” videos promoted the company’s trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views.
At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun to embrace emerging AI technologies. Shein uses a proprietary machine learning application (essentially a pattern-recognition algorithm) to gauge customer preferences in real time, predict demand, and deliver it across its lightning-fast supply chain.
As AI accelerates the business of mass-producing affordable, fashionable clothes like never before, Shein is one of many brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable: The company has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 25% by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
But environmental activists and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing methods and online-only business model are inherently emissions-intensive, and that its use of AI software to power these operations could increase emissions. Those concerns are heightened by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company’s carbon footprint nearly doubled between 2022 and 2023.
“AI is enabling fast fashion to become the super-fast fashion industry, and Shein and Temu are pioneers of this,” says Sage Regnier, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Sustainable and Just Future. “It literally wouldn’t exist without AI.” (Temu is a fast-growing e-commerce giant that runs a marketplace of goods that rivals Shein in selection, price and sales.)
Twelve years after its founding, Shein has become known for its unique prolificacy, which will reportedly bring the company more than $30 billion in revenue in 2023. Estimates vary, but it takes as little as 10 days for a new design on Shein to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site every day. At any given time, the company reportedly has as many as 600,000 items for sale, with an average price of about $10. (Shein has neither confirmed nor denied these figures.) One market analysis found that 44% of Gen Z in the U.S. buys at least one item from Shein each month.
The scale of this is also huge for its environmental impact: According to the company’s sustainability report, SHEIN will emit a total of 16.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2023 – more than four coal-fired power plants emit in a year. The company has also been criticized for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. The report said polyester, a synthetic fiber known for releasing microplastics into the environment, makes up 76% of the company’s total fabrics, yet only 6% of that is recycled.
