Green Retail: Lush stores move towards package-free products

Lush as been championing naked products for quite a while. Product inventor and co-founder Mo Constantine said: “I began unintentionally making naked products and I’ve gone down that route ever since. My first invention was the shampoo bar in the late eighties. Since then we’ve taken the concept much further.” From solid shampoo bars to bath bombs and soaps, nude is not new to Lush. But in a time when plastic pollution is a growing problem, it makes even more sense to branch out and push the boundaries just a little further. Think about how much packaging you use in a day - that morning coffee in a takeaway cup, vegetables wrapped in disposable coverings, or the plastic cutlery given to you with your lunch. The list soon adds up, but what if we could cut back on just a little of the packaging we use every day? Well, with the development of naked cosmetics perhaps you can. With pictures of a possible plastic-free ocean hitting our screens en masse, (by 2050, it’s estimated there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish), there are plenty of reasons to pursue a plastic-free bathroom. Lush co-founder Mark Constantine says: “Packaging is rubbish and for too long we have had to suffer excessive amounts of it. Now that the true financial and environmental costs are becoming obvious, customers are challenging manufacturers and retailers to cut the wrap.”