SHEIN just announced a $5 million donation to textile recycling in Africa.
Sounds pretty huge. 5 million bucks!
But think about it relatively.
A company that produces an estimated 1.8 BILLION garments annually is donating $5 million to help with textile waste.
That’s less than a penny per garment.
It’s like showing up with a water pistol to fight a forest fire.
Don’t get me wrong. The Africa Collect Textiles program is worthwhile. But SHEIN’s contribution sure feels more like conscience-washing than real change.
It’s orders of magnitude — absurdly remote — from offsetting their real impact.
In I Need That, I talk about how companies navigate the gap between consumer desires and responsible business. Fast fashion exists because we WANT it. But addressing its massive impact requires more than token gestures.
For product makers, I feel this raises urgent questions:
- Are you creating (or adding to) tomorrow’s problems?
- What’s the external cost of YOUR efficiencies?
- Is your solution proportional to the impact it makes?
- When DOES responsibility call for reinvention?
Some big companies appear to be tackling this head-on:
- Patagonia‘s Worn Wear program repairs and resells
- Levi’s Water<Less technology reduces water usage
- Nike‘s Move to Zero aims for zero waste and carbon
- REI‘s used gear program extends product life
Do you think these initiatives do enough to solve the real-world problems being created?
Or are they SHEIN us?
Action for today: Look at your product’s (or future product’s) FULL lifecycle impact. Are you creating problems your grandchildren and others of their generation will have to solve?
Laurier
Product Payoff: When Interface Carpets committed to zero environmental impact in 1994, people called their goal impossible. By 2019, they’d achieved it. Real change requires specific and ambitious commitment.