Artificial intelligence helped Shein become the biggest polluter in fast fashion

This story originally appeared in Grist magazine and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In 2023, fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Airplanes crisscrossed the globe, carrying tiny packages of its ultra-cheap clothes from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencer “#sheinhaul” videos touted the company’s trendy styles on social media, racking up billions of views.

At every turn, data was being created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry began to adopt new 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 through an ultrafast supply chain.

As AI makes the business of making affordable, fashionable clothes faster than ever, Shein is among brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable. The company has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.

But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s rapid manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently carbon-intensive — and its use of AI software to catalyze those operations could increase emissions. Those concerns were reinforced by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon emissions between 2022 and 2023.

“AI is enabling fast fashion to become an ultrafast fashion industry, and Shein and Temu are leaders in that,” says Sage Lenier, executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a climate nonprofit. “They literally couldn’t exist without AI.” (Temu is a fast-growing e-commerce giant whose marketplace rivals Shein’s in terms of variety, price and sales.)

In the 12 years since Shein was founded, the company has become known for its exceptionally efficient manufacturing, which is reported to have generated more than $30 billion in revenue for the company by 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design can take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site every day. The company reportedly has up to 600,000 items for sale at any given time, with an average price tag of around $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these figures.) One market analysis found that 44 percent of Gen Zers in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month.

That scale translates into a huge environmental footprint. According to the company’s sustainability report, Shein emitted a total of 16.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023—more than four coal-fired power plants in a year. The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. Polyester—a synthetic textile known to release microplastics into the environment—makes up 76 percent of its total fabric count, according to the report, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled.