By Maddy L. 

Stop shopping at Shein. Some readers may be asking, “What is Shein?”. Shein has grown to become one of the most popular online clothing brands, especially upon Gen-Z, with over 42 billion views of the hashtag #shein on TikTok. Shein provides trendy and stylish clothes to those who are less fortunate, which sounds like a great idea, but the prominent issue is that Shein is causing drastic harm to our environment while treating its workers poorly and providing them with unsafe working conditions. 

Let’s talk about Shein’s impact on the environment. Shein clothes are made with synthetic fabrics, primarily nylon and polyester. Nylon fabric takes roughly 30 to 40 years to decompose, and polyester takes 500+ years to decompose. Shein produces designs much faster than average retail stores while charging an extremely cheap amount of money, directly contributing to the increase in throwaway fashion culture. It does not help that Shein has become incredibly relevant on social media, with influencers posting clothing hauls and encouraging followers to contribute to the company. It has been found that most Shein pieces will go to the landfill before they are ever worn due to the terrible quality. According to their marketing strategy, in 2020, Shein launched 150,000 new items throughout the year, with an average of more than 10,000 new items per month. Due to an influx of supply and synthetic fabrics, Shein clothes are taking up a significant amount of space in landfills while plaguing our environment with carbon emissions and microplastics. 

Due to the rapid rate at which Shein is manufacturing new products, it is not far-fetched to believe that Shein is in violation of a number of labor laws as well. UK Broadcaster Channel 4 recently sent an undercover worker into two factories that produce clothing items for Shein and the findings provided insight into just how evil Shein is. Chinese labor laws claim that employees are not to work more than 40 hours per week, yet Channel 4 discovered that the fast-fashion giant has their employees working 120+ hours per week, with only one day off per month. Not only are they working an extended amount of hours, they are not getting paid nearly as much as they should be. It was discovered that workers make roughly 4,000 yuan per month, translating to only 556 US dollars per month. Channel 4 also revealed that Shein workers are deprived of two-thirds of their daily earnings if they make a mistake on an item. On top of extremely low pay, according to Public Eye, a researcher found that there were no emergency exits in sight at the Shein factories. The researcher expressed concern for workers in the case of a fire, explaining that it is difficult for workers to evacuate the building quickly and that the windows of the factory are barred. 

At what point will we begin to realize that Shein is a company that is not worth supporting? How much more can our environment take? How many more labor laws need to be violated before we finally wake up and decide to make a change? By encouraging people to stop shopping at Shein, and other fast fashion companies, we can take a step towards bettering our environment and creating better working conditions for laborers! 

Edited by Genesis V.