The online fast-fashion company Shein has been scored above a number of established Australian high street retailers in an annual review of ethical standards in the clothing trade.
The eleventh Baptist World Aid ethical fashion report, released on Tuesday, assessed 138 Australian and international companies representing 543 fashion brands. Each company is scored out of 100 across five broad supply chain topics, among them worker empowerment and environmental sustainability.
Shein was given 28. That is below the average score of 31.5, but above Myer, which scored 20 for its retail arm and its apparel business, the swimwear label Seafolly on one, the activewear maker 2XU on two, and Boardriders, owner of Roxy and Billabong, and the formal wear label Bec and Bridge, both on three. The clothing brands Ghanda and Windsor Smith were among the worst rated on zero, as was Shein's fellow Chinese e-commerce company Temu.
The highest score in this year's report, 94, went to the Australian underwear label Mighty Good Basics, which the report described as an "outlier". Denim brands were among the top performers, alongside intimates apparel, outdoor and technical performance gear, and some luxury labels. Across the whole sample, only 13 per cent of the companies surveyed could show evidence of paying a living wage to any of the workers in their supply chain.
Companies were scored on their efforts to protect workers and the environment at every stage of the supply chain, including the gathering of raw materials, fabric and plastic production, and garment manufacturing. The highest-scoring brands could demonstrate a wide range of criteria, such as factory audits, workers' rights training and assessment of the environmental effects of their top three fibres. Researchers analysed more than 15,000 data points drawn from company policies, practices and performance.
Participation varied. The report noted that Shein supplied Baptist World Aid with additional information, whereas Myer, Seafolly, Ghanda, Windsor Smith, Boardriders, 2XU and Bec and Bridge did not. Companies that did not take part were assessed only on their publicly available information, which the report says tends to yield a lower ranking. Overall, 58 per cent of the businesses analysed were assessed solely on public information, against 42 per cent that provided more.
Baptist World Aid said its researchers had run a "rigorous engagement process" so that every assessed company knew it was included and had the chance to take part. Companies were contacted by email on approximately 16 occasions over a 13-month period, a spokesperson said, including when they were sent their final score.
The organisation's ethical fashion lead, Katherine Halliday, defended the methodology and said some companies had a bigger "appetite for transparency" than others. The report, she said, "is designed to answer the question: 'How strong are the systems a company has to protect exploitation of workers across the supply chain?'" She said she was "heartened" that Shein's score had improved from previous years, which she attributed to public scrutiny and a resulting change in the company's practices.
Progress across the sector was slight. Since the previous report in 2024 the average overall score has improved by just 0.2 per cent. Halliday said more companies had committed to improving their standards but that this had not necessarily translated into tangible change for workers. "A modern slavery statement, for example, isn't enough to move the needle on these practices," she said. The stagnating scores, she said, showed that more government action was needed.
The report placed the findings in a national context, noting that Australia ranks as the world's highest consumer of textiles per person, with more than 200,000 tonnes of clothing ending up in landfill every year. "Overproduction particularly remains a growing challenge to sustainability," it said.
Temu said all its sellers had to "comply with a third-party code of conduct, which prohibits forced, penal or child labour and requires compliance with applicable laws on wages and working hours, as well as safe working conditions". Guardian Australia, which reported the findings, said it had approached the other companies named for comment.
It is worth reading the table arithmetically rather than as a league ladder. The scale runs to 100. The average is 31.5. The best score in the sample is described by the report itself as an outlier, and three separate brands arrived at nought. On that distribution the industry is contesting roughly the bottom third of the instrument, and 28 out of 100 is a solid mid-table finish within it.
This newspaper notes that a score of zero cannot be the floor of a company's conduct, because conduct has no floor. It is the floor of the scale. Several brands reached it, and no further progress downwards is available to them.
The participation figures complete the picture. A company that declines to answer is assessed on what can be found in public, which tends to produce a lower number, while a company that replies to approximately 16 emails over 13 months arrives in the table with a documented 28. The variable the report can actually move is correspondence.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has therefore reclassified the ethical fashion report as a measure of postal responsiveness with an ethics appendix. It finds the industry's standards almost perfectly stable, improving by 0.2 per cent in two years, and the willingness of companies to describe themselves to be the only quantity in the sector showing any movement at all.
On the report's own numbers, the shortest route up the ethical fashion table is not to treat workers better. It is to reply.