The Italian government has opened an investigation into Chinese fast fashion retailer Shein, over potentially misleading claims about the company's sustainability and environmental practices on its website. 

Reuters reports that the probe from the AGCM — Italy's antitrust watchdog agency — will focus on the Dublin-based company that operates Shein's website and app, with the agency alleging that the retailer engages in so-called "greenwashing," where it falsely promotes its products as environmentally friendly, using "generic, vague, confusing and/or misleading" language. Specifically, it cites Shein's "evoluSHEIN" collection, which allegedly misleads consumers about sustainable materials used for clothing. The AGCM also claims that Shein's goal to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25% by 2030 runs counter to emission increases reported by the company in both 2022 and 2023. 

This comes a month after Shein revealed that it had found two cases of child labor in its supply chain between Q1 and Q3 of 2023. At the time, Shein said that it had suspended orders from the manufacturers in question, and had given them 30 days to "remediate their offenses." The company has also been linked to allegations of forced labor and poor working conditions for several of its suppliers, with a U.S. congressional commissions finding that employees at multiple Shein factories had worked 18-hour days with no overtime pay and one day off a month.