During a global fashion summit in Copenhagen last week, Shein announced plans to donate $15 million over three years to The Or Foundation, a nonprofit that studies fast fashion waste in Ghana. The foundation described the donation as \u201cgroundbreaking,\u201d and director Liz Ricketts lamented the \u201cbackbreaking\u201d requirements of today\u2019s Ghanian fashion-waste workers. \u201cWe have been calling on brands to pay the bill that is due to the communities who have been managing their waste,\u201d Ricketts said. \u201cThis is a significant step towards accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a step, but how significant is up for debate. Shein\u2019s pledge fails to do one important thing: Stop secondhand Shein products from adding to the problem.<\/p>\n
Ghana\u2019s hub for secondhand clothing
\nEach week, an estimated 15 million secondhand garments arrive in Ghana from Europe and North America, lumped together in bales that resellers then sort through en masse. Only about 60% of these clothes prove useful; the rest end up in landfills around Accra, Ghana\u2019s capital city and one of the main hubs for secondhand clothing in west Africa. This weekly influx of what\u2019s known locally as \u201cdead white man\u2019s clothes\u201d is leading to an overwhelming buildup of waste.<\/p>\n
Through its new pledge, Shein is acknowledging that its clothing is part of that problem, which the Or Foundation says is \u201ca simple fact that no other major fashion brand has been willing to state yet.\u201d The foundation says its agreement with Shein is \u201ca first step toward our goal of industry-wide reckoning,\u201d and Shein\u2019s $15 million pledge is part of a $50 million \u201cExtended Producer Responsibility\u201d fund that will go toward textile waste-management and circular-economy initiatives.<\/p>\n
But as the biggest player in fast fashion, Shein also has strong motivation to play nice. It\u2019s the most popular fashion app in the US, and second most popular fashion website in the world. The company is valued at over $100 billion\u2014more than Zara and H&M combined\u2014and has built its success on selling cheap, low-quality goods with murky supply chains. Fast-fashion purveyors are also criticized for making clothes from new plastics and ripping off ideas from independent designers. In Ghana, some young designers say they have given up on producing collections because fast fashion easily crowds them out.<\/p>\n
Shein\u2019s initiative in Ghana does little to address those larger critiques, and is already getting panned as mere \u201cgreenwashing.\u201d The Or Foundation describes the agreement as allowing \u201cfor financial compensation to flow in the same direction as clothing waste.\u201d What it doesn\u2019t do is reduce the flow of clothing waste in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese retailer Shein is hoping to balance the export of its secondhand clothing to Ghana by throwing money at the waste that clothing generates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":9806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[7,37,38],"class_list":{"0":"post-9809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"category-lifestyle","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-fashion","11":"tag-lifestyle"},"yoast_head":"\n