It is difficult to ignore the fast fashion brands that pop up on social media websites. They advertise trendy clothes for a ridiculously cheap price. Sounds like the perfect shopping option, right? Yet, what they do not advertise is the copious amounts of textile waste and carbon emissions released. Fast fashion brands, such as SHEIN, gained popularity throughout the years. In 2022, SHEIN was the most popular fashion brand, making it worth as much as ZARA and H&M combined. SHEIN dominated the fashion industry at the price of destroying the Earth. 

SHEIN cultivated an ingenious business plan for our hyper-consumer culture. They test new products by launching them in small batches of 100-200, and evaluate the customer feedback. If a product is successful and in high demand, they restock. After the customer feedback and analysis, the process of mass production begins.  Cheap prices are not the only reason the items are popular. It is also their use of social media and fashion influencers promoting their products. This allows the company to surpass the popularity of more established brands like Nike and Adidas. 

SHEIN’s products remain in high-demand because they feed off of popular micro-trends; which are accelerated trends that last a month instead of a season. There is no specific target audience they cater to. They follow the “test and repeat” model. If a product sells, thousands of customers, specifically young women and teens, buy them immediately. They figure out what micro-trend is popular at the time, create thousands of cheaply-made clothes according to that style, and if they do not sell, they are thrown away. Yet when this microtrend ends, sometimes in as little as a week, these goods are thrown away or returned. What is discarded often contains materials harmful to the environment. These include synthetic materials, paints and chemicals that are not biodegradable. Then the cycle repeats. Either way, if the goods are sold or not, they are dumped in landfills, and business carries on as usual.  

SHEIN, along with many other fast fashion brands, produce an alarming amount of textile waste using unsustainable materials. Their clothes contain non-biodegradable microplastics such as nylon, polyester, and lycra. They are a prime contributor to the mountains of discarded clothes that end up in countries like Kenya, Ghana, and Tanzania. Out of the fifteen million items produced each week, forty percent end up in landfills within the first one or two weeks. The heaps of short-lived clothes contaminate the soil they sit on, they are washed out to sea, and prevent plants from growing in their surrounding areas. They are even burned on open fires, contributing to the vast amount of carbon emissions released. 

Not only is the destruction of SHEIN’s items a hazard to the environment, but the production in factories is unsustainable. The company’s rapid use of virgin polyester, which has to be processed, and consumption of large amounts of oil produces the same amount of CO2 as 180 coal-fired plants. As a result of their careless operations, the company creates about 6.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. 

Some would argue that SHEIN provides affordable clothes that respond to trends. And why shouldn’t affordable clothes be trendy? Should trends exist only for the rich? However, the quality of the clothes is so poor that they only last a short time, not only contributing to the waste, but also prompting the customers into a cycle of continuously buying clothes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are hundreds of sustainable clothing brands that are overlooked because brands like SHEIN have dominated social media. There are many alternatives, such as Organic Basics, which sells activewear made out of organic cotton and wool. Colorful Standard is another alternative brand which sells the basics, t-shirts, hoodies, tank tops, etc. A basic T-shirt from one of these companies will be about three to five times more expensive than SHEIN ($24 on Organic basics compared to $5 on SHEIN), but will last you years instead of weeks, and won’t hurt the environment far less. This is proof that you don’t have to kill the planet to look good.