We scored every fast fashion brand on sustainability. Here's what we found.
We scored the big fast fashion brands, from H&M and Zara to SHEIN and Fashion Nova. Here's what drives the gap between fast fashion and durable brands.
The fashion industry accounts for up to 10% of global carbon emissions, more than international flights and shipping combined. But which brands are actually doing something about it, and which are just talking?
We scored the big fast fashion brands from 0–100 using the same formula we apply to every company in the SINK database, from public data with an open method.
The results aren't pretty.
The scores
Live scores, highest first:
For context, Patagonia scores 50. Burberry scores 55. The gap between fast fashion and durable fashion is wide.
What drives the scores down
Three things consistently drag fast fashion brands to the bottom of our index.
Overproduction
Fast fashion's business model is built on volume. SHEIN reportedly adds thousands of new styles per day. The more you produce, the more you emit, and no amount of recycled polyester offsets the sheer scale of output. Our scoring formula applies a scale penalty based on total emissions, which means high-volume producers start at a disadvantage. That's on purpose: the climate feels total tonnes, however efficient each garment is.
Supply chain opacity
Most fast fashion brands cannot tell you where their garments are made, let alone the emissions profile of each factory. SHEIN, Fashion Nova, and PrettyLittleThing score poorly on Scope 3 reporting because there's almost nothing to assess. You can't score what isn't disclosed, and lack of disclosure is itself a red flag.
Circular economy is almost nonexistent
Take-back schemes, resale platforms, and design-for-longevity are either absent or token gestures across most of these brands. When a t-shirt costs £4, nobody's designing it to last a decade.
The exceptions (sort of)
H&M at 44 isn't good, but it's clearly better than the bottom of the table. They publish detailed sustainability reports, have science-based targets validated by SBTi, and run one of the larger garment collection programmes in the industry. The gap between H&M and Fashion Nova (8) is 36 points. That reflects a real difference in effort.
Primark at 37 is interesting. They've historically avoided e-commerce (lower logistics emissions) and have invested in the Primark Cares programme. But at their volume and price point, the structural challenges are enormous.
Zara (Inditex) at 33 benefits from relatively strong corporate disclosure and a Join Life sustainable line, but the core model, 12+ collections per year, works against them.
The ultra-fast fashion problem
The bottom of the table is dominated by ultra-fast fashion: SHEIN (15), PrettyLittleThing (11), Temu (12), Forever 21 (not public), Fashion Nova (8).
These brands share common traits: minimal sustainability reporting, opaque supply chains, extreme production volumes, and business models built entirely on disposability. Temu's score of 12 reflects a company that barely acknowledges sustainability as a concept.
How this compares to sustainable fashion
Fashion is a hard industry to score well in, even for these brands. Making, shipping and eventually throwing away clothing has a large environmental footprint, whatever the intent.
But the gap between Patagonia (50) and SHEIN (15), 35 points, reflects a very different approach to how clothes are made, sold and valued.
See the full breakdowns
Every score in the SINK database comes with a detailed 10-question breakdown showing exactly how each company was assessed, with sources and reasoning.
Think we got a score wrong? Every score is open to challenge. Find the company, pick a question, submit your evidence. That's how SINK stays accurate.
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