Let's talk about Shein
Is their new EPR fund more greenwashing?
Last week, ultra fast fashion brand Shein announced the launch of a new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fund to which it will dedicate US$50m to over the next five years. They claim that the funds will go to global causes that are “aligned with Shein’s commitment to addressing global textile waste management and furthering the development of a circular economy.”
Shein also announced that as part of this new EPR focus, that they have formed an agreement with the OR Foundation a US and Ghana based non-profit that works with upcyclers and second-hand clothing retailers in Accra’s Kantamanto Market, a main destination of unusable clothing from fast fashion brands. It is estimated that 40% of the clothing traded at the market ends up in landfills or is burned. The OR Foundation is to receive US$5M annually for three years from the overall Fund.
Some context: Shein is a Chinese online fast fashion brand founded in 2008, that has taken over the fast fashion market in the last 5 years with its ultra-cheap clothing. Its business model is based on and promotes excess, producing “a staggering 10,000 new products a day.” Over 90% of their clothing is fossil fuel based plastics: polyester and acrylic. They ship to over 150 countries. Now think about all those plastic garments produced…the transportion of deliveries and returns…the returns that end up in landfills because cost to restock is too high…and the planned obsolescence rendering the garment obsolete, often unwearable. You can be certain that Shein’s products end up at Kantamanto Market. Shein has a conspicuously poor environmental and social record, including poor working conditions from its suppliers and allegedly ripping off designs from independent labels, yet it remains popular. And so we are clear, cheap fashion does not democratize the industry, but rather creates wealth for those at the top: the customer base that drives the revenue are those with substantial disposable income, not the poor.
OR Foundations’ end of the line work is crucially important, and Shein’s funding will allow the foundation to provide additional educational and economic support for their programs that help to reduce the textile waste in the region. OR Foundation has made it clear to Shein and the rest of the apparel industry that it is still calling for an end to wasteful, toxic fast fashion business models. In fact, the OR Foundation has called on other brands like H&M, Nike and Adidas - who are all found on Accra’s beaches and dumpsites - to follow Shein’s lead to take up EPR policies.
So then, what to think about Shein’s EPR fund? Since Shein’s volumes of ultra cheap items directly contribute to the excessive textile waste that ends up at places like Kantamanto, isn’t this essentially paying someone else to clean up after their wasteful business model which they refuse to change? It appears that this agreement is, in a way, an admission by Shein that they are causing these problems, and that they themselves don’t have the solutions (because they are not willing to change). Yet it also appears that their EPR fund, focused solely on waste/end of pipeline strategies, is essentially a scheme to rationalize their excess.
I do not fault OR Foundation for seeking these funds: they need this financial support. The work they do is in the communities that are most affected by toxic textile waste at the end of the pipeline. But Shein (and fashion in general) has a responsibility to address this at the beginning of the pipeline, because it is their business model of excess with its reliance on cheap petrochemical synthetics that is the cause of this mess. EPR isn’t just for the end of the pipeline; it must be the ethos of the entire product lifecycle and part of a responsible business model guided by ethics, not excess and greed.