Shein? More Like SheOUT

I wanted to write the blog this week about cruise ships and how harmful they are to the environment. When I was doing research, I saw posts about mishandling wastewater and a hostile post on r/cruise, but there wasn’t enough information and I actually found that a few cruise lines are making efforts to reduce carbon footprints. 

My eyes glazed over the comments on the r/cruise post and someone had mentioned that cargo ships do way more damage to the environment than cruise ships. There are only about 230 cruise ships working today, which makes sense considering how huge they are. Cargo ships? How many? Over 5500. I’m reading an article from the Guardian and they cite that the largest cargo ships can generate as much pollution on one trip as 50 million vehicles, which is an insane amount of pollution. Are you not scared? Are you not thinking twice about your Shein orders? 

If you don’t know what Shein is, it’s a fast fashion company out of China, popular among the youths. When I was in college, rarely did people have disposable income, so they would buy all of their new clothes from Shein. In my experience, purchasing from Shein is almost like renting clothes; you can pay $6 for an ultra-trendy top, but after the second wash it’s practically falling apart. Last year alone, the company, which manufactures its product in China, produced over 16 million tons of carbon dioxide. When producing on that level, they’ll load containers to ship to the US, so the carbon footprint from one company, combined with the carbon footprint of container ships used to transport the product is an immeasurable amount of damage to the environment. In addition to the carbon dioxide, the containers can fall off the ships, leaving the metal and all the product inside to chill at the bottom of the ocean and there’s no telling what kind of impact that’s having on the ocean and its marine life. 

Personally, I quit ordering from Shein after my sophomore year of college, but if someone is in need of new clothes and can’t afford today’s prices, it’s one of few options. Second-hand clothing stores are full of old Shein and other fast fashion which leaves so many people without another option. 

Cargo ships, though. That’s the issue today. There’s obviously no easy solution because the world has a need to transport goods and services to other continents. That will never change. The quality of fuel and packing regulations could save some lives though. I see that the low grade fuel creates pollution so strong it accounts for 60,000 deaths per year and generates over $330 billion in medical costs due to disease of the heart and lungs from exposure and inhalation. 

It looks like the EPA is working on a solution for this and has been for a number of years but this issue goes far beyond the United States and affects almost every continent on Earth. Which makes me hope they hurry up on a band-aid to the problem at least. 

‍