This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
In 2023, fast fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, planes carried small parcels of ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. The influencers’ “#sheinhaul” videos advertised the company’s trending styles on social media, garnering billions of views.
At each stage, data was created, collected and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has started to adopt emerging AI technologies. Shein uses proprietary machine learning applications – essentially pattern identification algorithms – to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then serves with a lightning-fast supply chain.
As AI accelerates the production of trendy, affordable clothing faster than ever, Shein is also among the brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable. The company has committed to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 25% by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that using AI software to catalyze those operations could increase its broadcasts. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023.
“AI is enabling fast fashion to become a super-fast fashion industry, with Shein and Temu being the pioneers,” said Sage Lenier, executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a non-profit organization for the climate. “They literally couldn’t exist without AI. » (Temu is a growing e-commerce titan, with a product marketplace that rivals Shein’s in variety, price and sales.)
In the 12 years since Shein’s founding, the company has become known for its particularly prolific manufacturing, which is estimated to have generated more than $30 billion in revenue for the company in 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design can take as little as 10 days to become an item of clothing, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers up to 600,000 items for sale at any given time, at an average price of around $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these figures.) A market analysis found that 44% of Gen Z in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month.
