From Shein to Green: Can Fashion Turn a New Leaf?

I’m probably the biggest advocate of retail therapy you’ll meet. The excitement of getting new clothes, upgrading your wardrobe, or just trying on an outfit in a fitting room is a guaranteed good time. And I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t disagree with me on that. As a freshman in college, I remember everyone being so excited for their first Halloween in a new place. People planned their costumes months ahead of time, getting their Shein orders in early so that they could make sure everything fit and they wouldn’t have to make any panicked last-minute fixes. 

Actually, a lot of people’s going-out tops and clothes in general come from Shein. Or Zara. Or Amazon. Or Edikted. Or hundreds of other brands. 

Photo Credits: Glossy

And while these brands’ clothes are mostly different and range across a lot of styles, Shein and Zara and the rest have one thing in common: they’re fast-fashion.

Fast Fashion Brands and Their Consequences

Fast-fashion brands are those that get new styles to customers at a record pace. In just the past few months on Tiktok, you might have seen a number of new trends: arm cuffs, the resurgence of leopard print, bows (or coquette style), to name a few. Fast-fashion keeps up with these trends, churning out new clothes at affordable prices and appealing to consumers who want to both expand and refresh their wardrobe.

In 2023, the global fashion industry was worth around $1.7 trillion. From 2000 to 2014, clothing production doubled, with the number of pieces bought per capita increasing by 60%. Fast fashion was a large reason for this, having compressed production cycles and transport timelines compared to those of traditional clothing brands. And just like with any production cycle, clothing or not, you can assume this inevitably leads to more waste. In 2023, 40% of US consumers and 26% of UK consumers shopped at Shein or Temu, two of the largest and most well-known fast fashion brands in the world, cementing their position as the primary online fashion marketplaces in the US by 2025. This highlights, underscores, and bolds the impact of fast fashion on our society, not just environmentally or economically, but also societally. It’s important we take a step back and really examine how we can improve our fashion to be more sustainable, improving the process - anywhere and everywhere possible -  from raw material to hanging a new item in our closets. 

Photo Credits: University of Washington

Some of the biggest environmental impacts of fast fashion involve carbon emissions, water consumption and pollution, and energy consumption. Fashion production alone comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, which is shockingly equal to the emissions generated by the entire European Union. Fast fashion also uses 2% of the world’s energy, requiring massive amounts of petroleum and cotton, materials which aren’t all that environmentally friendly themselves.  Since brands also use synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon, and acrylic, they dump microplastics - pieces of non-biodegradable plastic - into the ocean, which occurs when these synthetic textiles get laundered. And this amount is by no means small; it’s estimated that 35% of all microplastics in the ocean come from just cleaning these textiles. Worse still, ocean water isn’t the only water polluted. The fashion industry, with fast fashion being one of the main contributors, is the second-largest consumer industry of water, using 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pair of jeans alone. Textile dyeing, used for most pieces of clothing, is also the world’s second-largest polluter of water, as the water leftover after the process is usually deposited into streams or rivers. 

How Modern Technology Can Help

While it’s important to be aware about the harmful effects of fashion production, we can only talk about it so much. The more important question may be: as fashion production evolves, how are modern resources (like AI and other technologies) able to help? And how can we improve these systems?

Obviously, there are good and bad answers to such questions. Taking Shein as an example, its manufacturing processes are extremely fast and its products can only be purchased online. These characteristics make the company inherently emissions-heavy, with AI software cranking up emissions even more and making brands like Shein “ultra-fast fashion.”

But the effects of technology aren’t all bad. In fact, it may be the key to driving the fashion world, fast fashion included, towards sustainability. One major well-know technological solution is second-hand online marketplaces. Websites like Depop, Poshmark, and Vinted allow people to buy clothes that have already been made and purchased by others, allowing the item’s lifespan to be lengthened and encouraging less clothing production. Alternatively, funding and promotion platforms like Fashion for Good work more at the source, choosing to transform business models themselves by connecting people involved with sustainable fashion to brands, retailers, and funders. It’s already supported groundbreaking ideas like Bear Fiber’s eco-friendly hemp-based fiber production. Their Innovation Program, focused on funding and growth, helps sustainable businesses at every stage, from startup acceleration to large-scale sustainable funding. 

Photo Credits: Fashion for Good

One of the biggest terms used in the sustainability space is “circular,” referring to the idea that from start to finish, manufacturers focus on minimizing waste and maximizing resources by creating products that can be reduced, recycled, or repurposed. With this in mind, certain tech companies have been focused on making a circular production system a tangible reality in the fashion industry. Evernu, for example, is a textile innovations company that repurposes discarded clothing to create high-performance engineered fibers. Even better, by breaking down and rebuilding fibers at a chemical level, they reduce waste, lower carbon emissions, and conserve water. With their unique process, they’ve secured partnerships with brands like Adidas, Levi’s, Target, and more. By expanding their technology to fast fashion brands, they could even help mitigate the impacts of brands like Shein and Zara. Renewcell is another strong example of technology solutions in fashion, using their recycling tech to turn used cotton and other fibers into  a raw, biodegradable pulp called Circulose. This pulp is then used to make more high-quality fibers like viscose and lyocell, helping to close the loop of textile production.

Photo Credits: Renewcell

Other Incentives: Tax Credits, Sustainability Reports, and More

The mode of exchange between a business and its consumer is money. So beyond technology, is it possible to use that as an incentive for entrepreneurs, business owners, and consumers to make their ventures more sustainable? Absolutely. Aside from relatively new regulations that are pushing brands toward greater accountability under the threat of fines — like New York’s proposed Fashion Act and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) which require businesses to publicly report their environmental impact — we can also use public policy and economics to further incentivize businesses.

For instance, we could remove or reduce the sales tax on second hand items. The government has used financial incentives to promote sustainability in the past, like offering discounts for reusable bags. Half of the consumers surveyed in ThredUp’s Resale Report said they would be more likely to buy secondhand clothing if the sales tax was removed. The government could also build on the idea of using tax credits, like they did for electric vehicles. The Investment Tax Credit is another example, helping the U.S. solar industry grow by over 200 times its size since 2006. The same report showed that 52% of retail executives said they’d adopt circular economy practices like textile recycling if financial incentives were available. If tax credits were used for the fashion industry, pollution, waste, and energy usage could be reduced significantly. 

Many people have the ideas for sustainable technology or business, but lack the resources to bring their ideas to life. With government grants, startups could get the funding they desperately need to scale and create an impact in the fashion industry. The U.S. The Department of Energy already uses grants to advance projects that target the decarbonization of the industrial sector and focus on clean energy manufacturing. By providing such grants for the fashion industry, the public sector could help play a much-needed role in supporting the sustainable development of the fashion industry. 

As we continue to indulge in retail therapy, it’s important we recognize the broader consequences of our choices and how the fashion industry can evolve to benefit not just people, but also the environment. Though fast fashion’s instant gratification is compelling, its impact on our planet, from waste to carbon emissions, to water pollution, is evidently a negative externality that impacts our present and will undoubtedly impact our future as consumption continues to climb. By encouraging the involvement of technological solutions, government support, financial incentives, and sustainable business models, we can work towards a more circular fashion economy. While the future of fashion is shaped by what we wear and experiment with, it can also be shaped by how we produce and consume it. So, after micro shorts and kitten heels, why not make the next trend green — an environmental movement, and also maybe the color?