The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-01)

The Sunday Times May 1, 2022 7

BUSINESS

press, a sprawling marketplace operated

by Alibaba, China’s answer to Amazon.

TikTok’s owner ByteDance is also report-

edly planning to establish a cross-border

e-commerce platform for the social

media platform’s billion-plus users.

Shein’s stunning growth is breeding a

new generation of copycats such as Zaful,

Rosegal and StyleWe. Last October, Ali-

baba launched AllyLikes, a website sell-

ing cheap, trendy fashion marketed

squarely at young western women. Its

app has been downloaded 490,000

times since launch, according to business

Regulation has to

happen because

this can’t go on,

it’s unsustainable

£12.6bn

Shein’s estimated sales in 2021

800,000

Car-mile equivalent emissions of a

single Shein flight from China

£135

The UK import duty threshold. Nearly

all Shein’s orders fall below it

string of academics concluded that we

urgently need to make and buy fewer

clothes to minimise environmental dam-

age. This, apparently, is anathema to

Shein, which bombards customers with

offers, countdowns and flash sales. Shop-

pers are encouraged to top up their bas-

kets with £4 bikinis and £2 t-shirts so they

hit the £35 free shipping threshold.

“Shein’s brand of ultra fast-fashion is a

danger to us all,” said MP Claudia Webbe,

who sits on the Commons environmental

audit committee.

“The fashion industry is already a mas-

sive part of the climate crisis and Shein is

just accelerating that.”

W

hile Shein is the fast-fashion

industry’s main culprit, other

operators habitually rely on air

freight to send deliveries quickly

to customers around the world.

Zara owner Inditex, the fashion giant

created by Amancio Ortega, who sits on

an estimated £37 billion fortune, sells to

customers in 215 countries from its base

in northwest Spain. The £7.9 billion of

orders it received from customers out-

side Europe last year were delivered via

air freight, making Inditex one of the

world’s largest users of air freight for out-

bound deliveries, according to analysts

from Credit Suisse.

Asos, which claims to be “transform-

ing into a net-zero emissions business”,

sent £590 million worth of goods to

customers in markets such as Austra-

lia and the Middle East via air freight

last year. A source close to the com-

pany said it had decreased its use of

air freight over time and goods

were sent in passenger planes, not

cargo planes.

Boohoo, which sells dresses for as

little as £4, dispatched £555 million

worth of orders to customers in Amer-

ica and Asia last year.

The growth of China’s cross-border

e-commerce players has been enabled,

and cheered, by the Chinese govern-

ment, which scrapped duties for online

retailers selling directly to overseas

customers in 2018. Sales have more

than quadrupled to £43.8 billion over the

past five years, according to consultants

at McKinsey.

China’s garment manufacturers sell

directly to western consumers on AliEx-

O

f the tens of thousands of

new designs added to

Shein’s website last October,

there was one that stood out.

The Chinese fast-fashion

phenomenon uploaded pic-

tures of a reusable, “eco-

friendly” mesh tote bag,

ideal for trips to the market

or the beach. The message

was clear: buy this £3 bag and you are

doing your bit for the planet.

What was not made clear on the listing

page — or, indeed, on any of the hundreds

of thousands of listings on Shein’s web-

site — was that the bag would be flown

across the world shortly after you click

the “buy” button. As far as environmen-

tal impact goes, it is hard to imagine that a

disposable plastic bag would be worse.

Flying goods on planes can create 100

times more carbon emissions than trans-

porting them the same distance on ships.

Shein, which flies goods out of China to

countries around the world, is at the fore-

front of the fast fashion industry’s latest

assault on the environment.

A typical cargo plane used by the likes

of Shein carries 100 tonnes of cargo and

spews out about 443 tonnes of carbon

dioxide on its 6,000-mile journey from

south China to the UK, according to the

CarbonCare emissions calculator. That’s

equivalent to the emissions created by

clocking up 800,000 miles driving a mid-

sized car, based on calculations by mycli-

mate.org.

“These guys don’t appear to care at all.

Shein is not looking at any of the implica-

tions of what they do from sourcing to the

waste they create. It is short-termism

taken to the nth degree,” said Professor

Dilys Williams, director of the centre for

sustainable fashion at the London Col-

lege of Fashion.

Shein is among a number of Chinese

e-commerce companies capitalising on

domestic tax breaks to sell everything

from t-shirts to phone chargers to thrifty

western consumers. Their use of air

freight is adding to the environmental

damage being done by western fast fash-

ion giants Inditex, Boohoo and Asos,

which also fly clothes to consumers in far-

flung corners of the world.

The sheer volume of Shein’s sales,

which Coresight Research estimates hit

£12.6 billion last year, means the com-

pany always has a plane on standby to

ship orders. Once shipments land in the

UK, they are picked up by couriers, such

as Royal Mail and Hermes, who handle

domestic delivery.

Sending individual consignments into

the country via air freight, rather than

keeping stock in UK warehouses, enables

Shein to escape paying import duty at the

border because the vast majority of

orders fall below the £135 threshold.

Shein, founded by reclusive entrepre-

neur Chris Xu in 2008, said its air freight

providers are hit with penalties if utilisa-

tion targets are not met and it prioritises

airports closest to the warehouses used

to process the order. The company said it

was “working toward” solutions to offset

emissions in its supply chain.

D

efenders of air freight say modern

planes are fuel efficient and use

kerosene, which is less harmful

than the diesel fuel used in con-

tainer shipping. Marco Bloemen,

cargo advisory lead at Accenture’s Sea-

bury Consulting, said before the recent

decline in passenger flights, two-thirds of

the 1,500 tonnes of cargo air-freighted to

the UK from China each week was trans-

ported in the bellies of passenger planes.

Air freight rates from Hong Kong to

northern Europe are about $5 per kg,

roughly double pre-pandemic levels.

That, as well as Shein’s heavy spend-

ing on digital marketing, has left

fashion industry executives con-

vinced that the upstart is racking

up substantial losses in the pursuit

of rapid growth.

The growing use of air freight

deepens the fashion industry’s

already colossal environmental foot-

print. The greenhouse gas emissions

produced by clothing production are

equivalent to those produced by the

UK, France and Germany combined.

The industry is responsible for a fifth of

all industrial water pollution and more

than a third of the microplastics pollut-

ing oceans. And after all that, the gar-

ments are worn an average of just seven

times before typically ending up in land-

fill or incinerators.

In a major 2020 paper entitled “The

Environmental Price of Fast Fashion” a

data intelligence firm Apptopia. Few

companies are pushing into air freight as

decisively as Alibaba, which has a long-

term goal of serving two billion custom-

ers worldwide. To reach them, Alibaba

has established Cainiao Network, a logis-

tics group that has raised more than

£4 billion in pursuit of its mission of deliv-

ering products anywhere in the world

within 72 hours. Cainiao has a dedicated

fleet of six jumbo jets and partners with

carriers to put on weekly all-cargo char-

ter flights across the Pacific ocean.

Alibaba is not the only powerhouse

seeking to insulate itself from ongoing

upheaval in global supply chains.

A study by the DePaul University in

Chicago found that Amazon’s air fleet,

Amazon Air, had swelled to 88 planes,

making almost 200 flights a day. The

planes, distinguishable by the online

behemoth’s ‘smile’ logo on the tail fin,

make regular stops at East Midlands air-

port, near to Amazon’s warehouses by

the M1. Amazon uses the jets to shuttle

goods between distribution centres.

E

ven before Shein began stuffing

planes full of clothes, the fashion

industry was on course to be respon-

sible for more than a quarter of the

world’s carbon budget by 2050,

according to the Ellen MacArthur Foun-

dation.

“The industry is out of control. Regula-

tion is not in the UK government’s DNA

but it has to happen because this can’t go

on, it’s completely unsustainable,”

Webbe said.

The UK has shown little appetite for

such regulation so far. In 2019, the gov-

ernment failed to act on a string of pro-

posals made by the Commons environ-

mental audit committee, which included

adjusting the tax system to disadvantage

fast-fashion operators against sustaina-

ble alternatives. Some observers believe

the government’s strong desire to stimu-

late trade with countries outside Europe

after Brexit is a factor in its reticence.

“The government wants us to be a

global partner in trade, which is all very

well and good but it’s unfettered trade

that takes off any checks and balances,”

said Peter McAllister, executive director

of the Ethical Trading Initiative.

“Meanwhile, companies we work with

are under pressure from customers to

behave responsibly, so we are creating an

uneven playing field that punishes good

British businesses.”

In March, the EU proposed new rules

that would require textiles sold in the

bloc to be more durable and made pre-

dominantly with recycled materials. The

New York State Assembly is also consider-

ing new legislation that would force fash-

ion multinationals with sales of more

than $100 million to identify the biggest

environmental impacts in their supply

chain and outline what they are doing to

minimise them. Companies could be

fined up to two per cent of their turnover

if they fail to comply.

Shein’s emergence as a major player in

the UK’s fashion industry is upping the

ante for the government to act. There is

little sign the industry can be trusted to

regulate itself.

SAM

CHAMBERS

Online retailers have fleets of cargo planes on standby around the

world ready to fly cheap clothes to your front foor. But at what cost?

Fast fashion’s dirty

secret is growing

too big to ignore

ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL

Fast-fashion leaders:

Inditex founder Amancia Ortega,

left, and Carol Kane and

Mahmud Kamani of Boohoo

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