Why I'm taking a lot more notice of Lush recently

Photo: Lush UK Facebook page

Lush has never featured heavily in my life. It's always there in the background, a great go to for Christmas and birthday gifts, making its presence known in shopping centres and high streets around the country by that unmistakable smell. But beyond the psychedelic gift boxes and sassily named bath bombs, I'd never looked into their other ranges, never bought anything there for myself.

That's all about to change.

A couple of things have made me sit up and take note of Lush recently.

Firstly, they encourage customers to recycle the black plastic pots that many of their liquid products come in.

This is something I've been hoping to see introduced for a while (in the vein of Irn Bru) in the likes of high street stores like Boots and Superdrug, but I understand that the logistics would be a nightmare (imagine sorting through the packaging of so many different brands to return it to the right supplier).

A post shared by LUSH UK (@lush) on May 4, 2016 at 5:31am PDT

But for every five black pots that you return to a Lush store, you'll be given a free face mask. The pots themselves are returned to Lush HQ, cleaned, melted down and remoulded into pots. I'd love to see the likes of Body Shop following this lead (it's worth noting that Body Shop's ethical standards are already above and beyond most high streets stores thanks to their anti-animal testing ethics).

Thanks to Dainty Alice blog for flagging this one up. I'd expected Lush to make a big to-do about it on their website and social media - and rightly so - but this doesn't seem to be the case.

Secondly, Lush is going naked. It's been luring customers in with a slow strip-tease for a while, but this Christmas, 80% of its products will be sans clothing, sans packaging and au naturel. What's so special about this?

The solid version of the Snow Fairy conditioner for Christmas 2017

It doesn't just apply to the solid products like bath bombs and soaps. Conditioners, body scrubs and shower gels are all getting the naked treatment, being sold without any packaging at all.

Wait, what?

Isn't that going to get messy? Nope, the wizards at Lush have whipped up solid versions of these products, which require no packaging. It works like this:

"Solid, naked products like body butters are formulated with little to no water and are therefore often innately self-preserving - just like our Christmas range. By replacing the water content with ingredients that remain solid at room temperature, like Fair Trade cocoa butter, bacteria growth is inhibited and stays that way. Eureka.​"

Add to this the Lush's long standing Against Animal Testing policy and pledge towards ethical buying, and that omnipresent smell may have just lured itself a new loyal customer.