Why Is Shein So Bad?: Ultra-Fast Fashion’s Revolving Runway

Their virgin polyester pillaging belches the same CO2 as 180 coal-fired power plants, they produce over a million trendy clothes styles per year (versus the fast fashion industry average of 25,000), and journalists regularly uncover evidence of awful Shein working conditions in illegal, unsafe, unregulated factories for barely a living wage to sew their bikinis and short-shorts sold at unrealistic and ultra low prices.

Yet Shein (pronounced SHE-in)—the Chinese ultra-fast fashion behemoth with a history of environmental destruction and labor abuses—continues its insurmountable rise, peddling its toxic crop tops with no legislation, taxation, or consequences.

With some Gen Z influencers defending Shein with comments like “sustainability is a privilege,” we figured dress-up time doubles as high time to set the record straight. Sustainability is a human right, and sustainable fashion is a future-proof imperative.

A fashion brand more Googled than Adidas and Nike and that sells more clothes at ridiculously low prices than all fast fashion industry labels combined? Sounds like Shein.

In only a few years, Shein went from a little-known low-cost online Chinese wedding and women’s wear merchant to a net worth of $100 billion dollars in 2022. The privately-held and third-largest unicorn company is owned by one very mysterious Chinese-American, Chris Xu, who is more your nerdy Silicon Valley type than a flaunting fashionista. To date, Chris has responded to zero requests for an interview, ever.

Yet its algorithms keep churning, as it bemuses mostly young women on TikTok and Instagram, turning the shopping experience into a gamified performance and its consumers into both bargain hunters and the hunted. The #shein hashtag has nearly 10 billion views. The #sheinhaul hashtag, where customers show off their “hauls” of fresh, cheap polyester follows closely behind.

Beyond the overwhelming amount of plastic AND controversies the company is embroiled in (which it appears consistently aloof to), Shein is positively bombastic in its approach to rewriting the rulebook of how-to-fast-fashion.

You see, Shein isn’t just fast fashion—they’re ultra fast fashion. Their ultra-enhanced “test and repeat” approach takes everything brutal about fast fashion brands and puts them on steroids. That means faster production pipelines, faster trend cycles, and faster disposal into our brimming landfills.

If you don’t believe us, consider Shein produces as many as 10,000 new styles per day. For comparison, that’s what fast-fashion giant H&M releases in half a year.

From “design” (quotations since the design process is often bold theft), to sourcing, to manufacturing, to shipping, to #sheinhaul video uploaded online—THREE DAYS. Yet Shein is proud of how it sells clothes via a “real time fashion” methodology and on-demand manufacturing, even calling its approach to producing clothing “transformative”.

Every item starts out in “small-batch” production, with Shein’s algorithms determining hot sellers that get picked up for larger orders from one of their 6,000 partner factories in China. Only 6% of Shein’s inventory is sold for 90-plus days.

Through clever UX that “tricks” people into buying, ultra fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu are cultivating addictive online “dark patterns” that manipulate consumers into overconsumption. People no longer shop for clothing, they shop for entertainment. In turn, buyers share their personal data that gets fed into algorithms to crank out more clothes, more sales, more styles, more “hauls” for social media, more likes, more purchasing, and more waste.

This business model is so inherently unsustainable and unethical, one lawsuit accuses Shein of being an organized crime ring.

Meanwhile, a quick glance at the company’s website, and you can see they’ve hired a fresh new ESG (environment, social, governance) department to do the dirty work of steam-cleaning all the atrocities Shein committed on its rise to the top.

The amount of controversy that stems from Shein is exhausting. New headlines emerge daily about the routinely bashed brand. From mishandling customer data and sweatshop labor, to tone deaf product labeling (like selling a Muslim prayer rug as a “Greek mat”), an influencer PR stunt gone wrong, and a serious lawsuit claiming the brand is guilty of organized crime… Shein has a lot to answer for.

Mishandling Customer Data

In 2018, login details for 39 million Shein accounts were stolen. Most affected account holders were not contacted and there was no password reset. In October 2022, Shein was fined $1.9 million dollars for lying and mismanaging it.

Internet’s “Most Manipulative Website”

Shein’s website was studied to understand its “dark patterns,” including time-limited countdowns, exclusive subscriber discounts, trending stickers and prompts to spend more to get a free gift or delivery. Research found Shein shoppers were faced with at least eight different instances of dark patterns as they navigate the site to checkout.

Illegal Chemical Use

Greenpeace wrote a damning report stating, “The ultra-fast-fashion brand SHEIN has a business model based on hazardous chemicals and environmental destruction.”

A Canadian broadcaster performed a test in 2021 on a vinyl toddler jacket and purse by Shein, that were found to contain 20x the legal limit for lead in children’s items. Health Canada recalled them, and the world took note of the regulatory need to reign in Shein.

Tax & Regulatory Evasion

US lawmakers accuse Shein of exploiting de minimis trade and customs loopholes to avoid taxes on items under $800 sent to the US. Since the brand has no storefronts, it means their items aren’t subject to the scrutiny that large cargo ship goods are. This also prevents boycotting Uyghur-produced products.

Cotton From Slave Labor

While Shein says they don’t use cotton from Uyghur forced labor camps in Xianjing, they’re also notorious liars. The math simply doesn’t add up to prove they don’t use slave cotton: the volume of cotton garments they produce is astronomical. And 00% of all cotton in China comes from slave labor.

In November 2022, Bloomberg commissioned a lab test which confirmed the sad truth: Xianjing-sourced cotton. Shein never refuted this and has yet to take formal accountability.

PR Gone Wrong

In a failed PR attempt, the brand sent a handful of US influencers on a paid trip to their Chinese factories in summer 2023. They were taken to a staged “Innovation Center” and fed a very greenwashed, inaccurate picture of Shein. Influencers were called out for acting as propaganda mouthpieces and later apologized.

Copyright Infringement, Theft, & Organized Crime

The list of copyright theft lawsuits against Shein is seemingly never ending.

The brand claims it’s not intentional, and yet they created an algorithm to systematically rip-off independent designers. As if their supply chain, slave and sweatshop labor, cheap harmful polyester, carbon use, and destructive product end-of-life issues weren’t bad enough, the brand cannot even achieve the first step—design—with integrity.

They’re currently facing a court case that accuses them of organized crime to steal designs.

Forever21 Collaboration

At the time of researching this article, Shein’s latest move is sustainable fashion’s greatest fear.

The brand, whose US pop up store tour was a success, snatched up a partnership with the beleaguered 2000s teen dream (and eco nightmare) Forever21. Call it the year’s most deplorable partnership of cheap plastic, with Forever21 sold on Shein’s site, and Shein coming to Forever21 stores near you.

Let’s now look at the many Shein ethical issues behind that $10 sweater.

As the fashion leader of Tik-Tok’s “haul” of shame, Shein takes virtually zero responsibility for its social impact, since they only ever apologize upon which another journalist must cover the same story. Despite their recent “commitments” to more sustainable practices, Shein’s recurring empty promises—only to then get caught again—makes them the Doctor Evil-style villain corporation of some deplorable B-movie.

While TikTok videos of alleged “help me” messages on garment tags were debunked earlier this year, investigative reports into Shein’s factories raised concerns of the micro-trend cycle’s dangers. Hours way exceeded legal maximums, unfair pay punishments were regular, fire exits and windows were often nonexistent, and garment workers were in a constant state of overwhelm, often living at factories.

Shein has yet to acknowledge or meaningfully address that they purposefully exploit their workers to maximize profit. (One C-level executive tried to convince Time that their profitable rise is thanks to their “real time retail cutting inventory costs”…)

Transparency

Shein’s business practices are rife with scandal, and yet they rapidly scale up while remaining a mystery.

Shein isn’t a publicly traded company, so the China-born and Singapore-based fashion brand doesn’t have to disclose sales, revenue, or employment details, and much about its governance, leadership, and ownership remains murky. But behind the iron veil of the LCD screen that separates the brand online from customers, gross abuses are regularly made.

Since Shein manages to keep such a tight lid on their production, it hasn’t been proven that they use cotton sourced from Xinjiang. The area, notorious for forced labor camps of the enslaved Uyghur population, is where almost 90% percent of China’s cotton originates. That being said, Bloomberg did a test last year indicating Shein’s cotton products do come from Xinjiang.

Shein’s response was to neither refute nor take responsibility.

As of writing this, the brand was just asked by US lawmakers to prove its products use no slave labor. Confirmation of this would not only give legal grounds to ban Shein products from the US, but also stop it from becoming a publicly traded company.

In 2022, Shein scored eight out of 150 in Remake’s Accountability Report and in 2021, the brand scored a zero in the organization’s Sustainability Assessment. Remake also pointed out that Shein made no supplier list disclosing its approximately 6,000 suppliers available, nor did it disclose wage data or outline a policy for working hours or worker wellbeing.

Beyond that, none of Shein’s supply chain has certifications to ensure worker health and safety, living wages or other labor rights.

Labor Practices

Two words: slave labor.

While the literal jury’s still out, it’s likely the case (more than 80% of all Chinese cotton sadly comes from there now) and Shein has already lied about dangerous levels of toxic clothing chemicals, systematically ripping off small businesses, and poor working conditions.

Between November 2021 and October 2022, three reputable journalistic exposés— here, here, and here—went undercover inside grueling and tedious factories in Guangzhou that supply clothes exclusively to Shein.

With each Shein factory visited, the story was essentially the same: migrant workers desperate for a job would toil for a base salary (often with-held the first month) of about $500USD to make 500 pieces of clothing per day, and beyond that would earn roughly four cents per item. While overtime was voluntary, Shein workers also probably wouldn’t get paid, might face penalties, or possible termination if staggering daily quotas were unmet.

Work happened around the clock, with a morning, afternoon, and after-dinner shift, usually finishing around 3am only to start again at 8am. Factories with one day off per month were seen as lucky: most were without a single Sunday free. In Channel 4’s documentary, one anonymous worker had one day off per year (!) to visit her home village on Chinese New Year.

Young women at the factories would wash their hair at lunch breaks and even a small sewing mistake could warrant two thirds deducted of a day’s wages. Sometimes, uneducated workers from rural regions desperate for income were under sixteen years old.

Shein factory working conditions and hours are not only undignified and soul-sucking, but they also violate even lax Chinese labor law. When Shein was accused of breaking laws and failing to make the required disclosures on factory conditions, they offered a classically fake-sparkly Shein sheen, saying they “perform regular internal audits”.

Meanwhile, this was after they’d already been busted in the first publicized investigation, to which they did their own internal investigation, found 80% required immediate action, and then clearly… did nothing.

Animal Welfare

Nowhere in any online materials does it acknowledge Shein’s use of animal products. They do have an Animal Welfare Policy, but its enforcement is unknown.

After an unmitigated rise to the top of the fashion industry using any destructive means necessary—exploitative labor, alleged slave labor, informal factories, zero eco-friendly materials, and CO2-spewing air freight—Shein is finally trying to clean up its act.

In their second ever Sustainability Report, the brand launched their evoluSHEIN roadmap to sustainability practices, which comprises nine priorities under three pillars – people, planet, and process – and finally attempts to focus on their critical environmental and labor challenges.

Materials

In Shein’s latest sustainability report, they claim they want to become a global leader in deadstock materials rescuing, and will establish a fully circular textile supply chain by 2050, per their 2022 World Circular Textile Day commitment.

They’ve also committed to recycled materials, traceable cotton, and manmade cellulosics, and talk about improving quality and durability, but don’t outline how or how to measure it. yYet still, almost 70% of all Shein garments are synthetic materials like polyester.

Climate Commitments

Shein acknowledges in their sustainability report,“In 2022, production volume increased by 57% and our emissions increased by 52%. The change in our absolute emissions from 6.04 to 9.17 million tonnes CO2e from 2021 to 2022 comes from the strong growth of our business. We are at the beginning of our mitigation journey and began implementing decarbonization programs at the end of fiscal year 2022.”

In other words, in the midst of the ongoing climate crisis, Shein admitted their carbon emissions increased by a whopping 52%. URGENT decarbonization commitments they have made include:

• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (scopes 1, 2 and 3) by 25% by 2030
• Carbon-neutral in scope 2 by 2030
• Source 100% forest-safe viscose and paper-based packaging by 2025
• All packaging from 50% preferred materials by 2030
• Source 50% of SHEIN branded products through the evoluSHEIN by Design initiative by 2030 (their product initiative aimed at accelerating preferred materials and responsible manufacturing processes.)
• A commitment to use 50% recycled plastic for their wasteful Shein product baggies is the only time “shipping” is mentioned, which leads us to assume carbon-intensive air freight is not yet being phased out.
• Queen of the Raw (deadstock) partnership announced
• Committed $15 to the Or Foundation, who clean up textile waste in Ghana
• Partnered with CanopyStyle and Package4Good to stop the use of vital forests in fabric and develop paper-based packaging by 2025.

Again, time will tell if the brand’s need to rehabilitate its beleaguered image spurs actual overhaul of their destructive operations.

Circularity

It’s not all doom and gloom with the Shein machine (just mostly). Regardless of their true motives, the brand has made recent strides to improve its sustainable practices:

By 2025, they want the majority of their customer base engaged in circularity. For this, they just released the Beta-version of their SHEIN Exchange platform, a peer-to-peer inventory of secondhand Shein items.

Shein also set up an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Fund, to which the company will dedicate $50 million over the next five years. As part of it, Shein donated $15 million to the Or Foundation, who help manage endless textile waste streams in Ghana.

Their newfound partnership with Queen of the Raw could revolutionize deadstock materials being repurposed, if the brand really does manufacture 50% of its inventory from it.

Yet as it were, the un-green Shein machine never stops.The lightspeed of “on-demand” ultra-fast fashion makes the entire endeavor the very definition of unsustainable. The endless pursuit of volume over craft results in a deluge of bad quality clothes that flood the market. Many of them end up in landfills and incinerators, or get shipped to places like Ghana to deal with it.

In March 2023, the European Commission began to alleviate the environmental impact of Shein and other fast fashion labels by setting legislation in motion for how durable and reusable clothes must be, requiring companies to include sustainability details on garment labels. Shein’s corporate office appears to be readying themselves for scrutiny. With a new ESG team of executives taking on the brand’s environmental, social, and governance grievances, time will tell whether it amounts to greenwashing or a real “evolu-Shein”.

So until then, is Shein OK to buy from? Not unless they make a serious turnaround—and given their past and current abuses, we’re more inclined to say that Shein is irredeemable.