Nine Reasons I’m Getting All My Stuff From Lush Now

We live in a commercial world. Very. Environmentalists and just about every other campaigner keeps telling me. So when I read about trendy companies like Lush, hear about them from all my female friends, pass by their store in my local town, I’m going to be a bit sceptical.

This is because we also have this thing called greenwashing. Greenwashing is where commercial concerns try to make out they care more than they actually do by spending loads of money they could be spending on actually caring more on caring less and making it look like they care more. Really, they couldn’t care less and I care about that, although I’m sure they also couldn’t care less that I care more.

“Let’s go into Lush” the gals tell me whenever we pass within 100 metres of the place.

“Yeh I really need a weirdly-shaped bar of home made soap for the gym” I think.

“He we go, another dose of the Lush delusion” I also think.

So I saw this story in Treehugger:

1. Lush adds ocean plastic to its packaging and I thought well, maybe. It turns out Lush in Vancouver Island, Canada has been working with local Pacific Ocean waste plastic collector Ocean Legacy and now aims to use it as packaging  

This is impressive. Then I found Lush does a lot more than this, and now I’m seriously thinking of getting all my stuff from them. Even though I am a man and I have no idea if they sell half the stuff I need. I visited their web site and they also:

2. Sell 35% of their products with no packaging
3. Use 100% post-consumer plastic in their pots and bottles. This too is amazing, I just don’t know what it means. Maybe this is the plastic those nasty consumers have already got their hands on

4. 

   Entice shoppers to return their black pots with the offer of a free fresh face mask. Again, I don’t really know what a face mask is, having only seen one on TV comedy. Is this an actual mask, or some gloop that dries on your face so someone can take a photo of you with cucumbers on your eyes?

5. Did away with gift-wrap altogether and now use organic cotton wraps instead

6. Use 100% recyclable cardboard boxes for stuff

7. Pack their stuff in plant-based ‘peanuts’. Also useful if the delivery guy gets hungry

8. Use biodegradable cellophane. There’s something magical about cellophane, brings back childhood memories

9. and as you’d expect, even their catalog is printed on 100% recyclable paper

I’m deeply impressed and I think: if Lush can, why can’t all the others as well? Well, I’m optimistic. They can.