As fast fashion giant Shein embraces AI, its emissions are soaring. The company nearly doubled its emissions in 2023, making it the biggest polluter in the industry.Grist Sachi Kitajima Mulkey Sept. 10 2024 In 2023, the fast fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, airplanes ferried small packages of its ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of custom er mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencers’ “#sheinhaul” videos advertised the company’s trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views. At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AItechnologies. Shein uses proprietary machine-learning applications — essentially, pattern-identification algorithms — to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then services with an ultra-fast supply chain. As AI makes the business of churning out affordable, on-trend clothing faster than ever, Shein is among the brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable, too. The company has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.  But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that the use of AI software to catalyze these operations could be cranking up its emissions. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023. “AI enables fast fashion to become the ultra-fast fashion industry, Shein and Temu being the fore-leaders of this,” said Sage Lenier, the executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a climate nonprofit. “They quite literally could not exist without AI.” (Temu is a rapidly rising e-commerce titan, with a marketplace of goods that rival Shein’s in variety, price, and sales.)

In the 12 years since Shein was founded, it has become known for its uniquely prolific manufacturing, which reportedly generated over $30 billion of revenue for the company in 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design may take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers as many as 600,000 items for sale at any given time with an average price tag of roughly $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these reported numbers.) One market analysis found that 44 percent of Gen Zers in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month. That scale translates into massive environmental impacts. According to the company’s sustainability report, Shein emitted 16.7 million total metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023 — more than what four coal power plants spew out in a year.  The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. According to the report, polyester — a synthetic textile known for shedding microplastics into the environment — makes up 76 percent of its total fabrics, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled.  And a recent investigation found that factory workers at Shein suppliers regularly work 75-hour weeks, over a year after the company pledged to improve working conditions within its supply chain. Although Shein’s sustainability report indicates that labor conditions are improving, it also shows that in third-party audits of over 3,000 suppliers and subcontractors, 71 percent received a score of C or lower on the company’s grade scale of A to E — mediocre at best. Machine learning plays an important role in Shein’s business model. Although Peter Pernot-Day, Shein’s head of global strategy and corporate affairs, told Business Insider last August that AI was not central to its operations, he indicated otherwise during a presentation at a retail conference at the beginning of this year......read on    https://grist.org/technology/as-fast-fashion-giant-shein-embraces-ai-its-emissions-are-soaring/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=dail 

Ad industry grapples with role selling consumption in the climate crisis. Does being an effective agency mean helping sell more products or can it mean helping mitigate climate emergency? Guardian Amy Westervelt  Tue 21 Nov 2023  After all, advertising drives consumption – a fact of which the industry is intensely proud. The UK’s Advertising Association likes to brag that every pound spent on advertising returns six pounds to GDP. The US Advertising Coalition finds that every dollar of ad spend drives about $21 in sales. “The fundamental question is: is the advertising industry going to help or hinder society in its attempt to reach net zero?” said Jonathan Wise, a co-founder of the nonprofit group Purpose Disruptors, which aims to shift the industry away from high-consumption advertising. “At the moment, on balance of evidence, the decision is to hinder. It’s advertising driving consumption upward.” The industry disputes this. “Our research shows the goal of most advertising is to help brands, products, and services grow sales at the expense of their competitors,” a spokesperson for the Advertising Association said. “This leads to substitution rather than increased consumption overall.” Unsurprisingly, the sector knows the importance of sending out encouraging messages about the work they are doing. 

In 2020 the Advertising Association, along with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers created Ad Net Zero, and billed it as the global advertising industry’s response to climate change. The action plan, however, focuses primarily on reducing the emissions of agencies’ own operations as opposed to those associated with the products they sell.There is increasing agreement that although individual behaviour should not be the primary focus for change, some individuals’ behaviour – namely that of the world’s wealthiest people – has a much bigger impact not only on global emissions but also on broader economic and political trends. But how should the advertising and PR industries grapple with the overconsumption of the top 10%? There has been a push within the industry to get advertising to shift towards more sustainable products, for example electric vehicles rather than combustion engine cars, or plant-based foods as opposed to beef. This is seen by the industry as one of the critical ways they can have an impact, and such shifts do deliver reductions in emissions. But Wise worries that simply replacing emissions-intensive consumption with a lower-emissions version isn’t enough to decarbonise the economy. And while a handful of agencies are looking to sell greener options, the actions of the industry as a whole seem to show a resistance to considering such things as their responsibility. 

The transportation sector, identified as probably the most significant area of consumption for the top 10% by Julia Steinberger, a professor of ecological economics at the University of Lausanne and the author of a 2020 paper on the topic, is a good example. “The categories of consumption that the wealthiest people over consume or overspend on and that constitute the big difference in their emissions is really flying longer distances, and driving bigger cars longer distances, so transportation is really the big one,” Steinberger said. Data on ad spend from the data service Media Radar shows that advertisers in those categories drive that precise overconsumption. US automakers are spending at least twice as much to push their largest models of electric vehicles – SUVs, trucks and sedans that require extra large batteries, or in some cases two batteries – versus more compact options that would reduce the need for not only rare earth minerals but also steel, iron and plastic. In some cases the chasm between what is spent to push larger versus smaller EVs is even larger. From October 2022 to October 2023, General Motors spent more than $96m (£76m) to advertise its electric Hummer and Blazer models (not including agency creative fees). It spent just over $5m to advertise its compact Bolt option over the same time period. Ford spent $61.2m (£48.7m) to advertise its electric F150 , and around $9m to advertise its mid-size electric Mustang. Among the top automotive advertisers, only BMW and Hyundai are spending as much or more to market their more efficient EVs. Similar trends are evident in the air travel industry. More than half of Delta Air Lines’ approximately $151m ad spend from October 2022 to October 2023, for example, was spent advertising long-haul flights, encouraging travellers to rack up air miles to use for more travel, and pushing upgrades to premium classes, although the airline also spent tens of millions of dollars to advertise its commitment to “sustainable aviation fuels”......read on......    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/21/ad-industry-grapples-with-role-selling-consumption-in-climate-crisis

George Monbiot- Extreme wealth has a deadening effect on the super-rich – and that threatens us all. Guardian  Wed 24 Jul 2024 On a calm and beautiful morning off the coast of south Devon last week, I was watching a small pod of dolphins from my kayak. I had spotted them from half a mile away, feeding and playing on the surface. They were heading my way, so I sat on the water and waited. But from round the headland, at top speed, came a giant twin-engined maritime wankpanzer. Though the dolphins were highly visible and it had plenty of time either to stop or avoid them, it ploughed towards them at full throttle. As it passed, missing them by a few metres, the driver turned and glanced at them, but never checked his speed. The dolphins dived. They briefly reappeared much farther from the coast, after which I didn’t see them again. I could hear the boat long after it disappeared: it sounded like a jetliner. God knows what distress it might have caused the dolphins, which are highly sensitive to sound. I was overwhelmed by two sensations. One, obviously, was disgust. The other was puzzlement: where’s the joy? If there is one thing that almost everyone loves and – if they’re lucky enough – delights in seeing, it’s dolphins. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t stop and watch. Though I’ve experienced this good fortune dozens of times, because I’m so often at sea, I never cease to find it thrilling. The elation stays with me for weeks.But to the driver of that boat, it seemed, the sea was just a highway on which to race towards the horizon. It reminded me of something I’ve seen many times: the deadening effect of wealth. To own and run a 35ft boat of that kind, you need to be extremely rich. It retails at about £300,000, on top of which are the extraordinary costs of mooring, winter storage, maintenance and fuel. Isn’t money of that kind supposed to buy you pleasure? If not, what’s the point?

Extreme wealth can severely hamper enjoyment. As Michael Mechanic documents in his book, Jackpot, there are two groups of people who have to think about money all the time: the very poor and the very rich. Immense wealth possesses you just as much as you possess it: managing it becomes a full-time job. You don’t know whom to trust; you can start to imagine your friends aren’t friends at all; it can dominate and poison your family relationships. It can hollow you out, socially, intellectually and morally.But I think there might be a further corroding aspect of wealth that hasn’t been widely discussed. Great wealth flattens the world. If you can go anywhere and do anything, everything is over the horizon. You speed past the local and the particular, towards an endlessly escalating ideal of luxury: the better marina, the bigger yacht, the private jet, the super-home. The satisfaction horizon can retreat before you. Place has no meaning, other than as a setting that might impress the friends you no longer trust. But anyone who is impressed by money is not worth impressing. There also seems to be a connection between speed, noise and ego. There must be something unresolved about a person who feels the need to fill the sky with noise and capture the attention of everyone he passes, whether he is on the road or the water. And yes, it is almost always a “he”. Studies show an association between traditional concepts of masculinity, speed and dangerous driving. It’s unsurprising that attempts to restrain driving behaviour, such as speed cameras and low-traffic neighbourhoods, have become such potent themes in the culture wars, animated by perceived threats to traditional gender roles and power relations.

Travelling by kayak, I cover less sea and must stay closer to the coast than the people racing past in powerboats. But I have an intimacy of connection with the places and living systems that surround me, with the sounds of nature, with signs too subtle to see at speed – sandeels stippling the surface, the dorsal fins of bass pursuing them, holographic sea gooseberries suspended in the water column, cowries eating star ascidians on the rocks exposed at low water – of which they are likely to be deprived.     https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/24/extreme-wealth-super-rich-devon-society-planet

When our slow-buy year was on the brink of failure after just six months, I came across a harsh but hilarious screed against minimalism, written by Chelsea Fagan of the Financial Diet blog. Fagan levels multiple arguments against all forms of minimalism. She writes that it is classist, a fad for the rich, because people in real poverty don’t have to worry about what not to buy, and because of how expensive “sustainable” and “heirloom” items often are. “‘Stop wasting money on all that Ikea nonsense!’” Fagan imagined a minimalist saying. “‘With this $4,000 dining table hand-whittled by a failed novelist in Scandinavia, you will never need another piece of furniture!’ – which really just points to having enough disposable income to ‘invest’ in your wardrobe and surroundings.” Furthermore, she derides the idea that a simple aesthetic and decluttering equals moral worth, a “faux spiritualism”. Every form of minimalism, Fagan concludes, “is just another form of conspicuous consumption, a way of saying to the world, ‘Look at me! Look at all of the things I have refused to buy, and the incredibly expensive, sparse items I have deemed worthy instead!’” While these arguments against minimalism – particularly in its most extreme forms – struck me as worryingly true,   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/28/too-much-stuff-can-we-solve-our-addiction-to-consumerism