LUSH, the fresh, handmade beauty brand, is pioneering a new era in sustainable packaging by becoming the first in the industry to use Prevented Ocean Plastic. This innovative material is made from certified recycled plastic waste collected from coastal areas at risk of polluting our oceans, effectively stopping plastic waste before it reaches our seas.
The initiative, which is in line with the brand’s commitment to ‘leave the world lusher than we found it’ means LUSH can now offer UK customers Prevented Ocean Plastic for its 100ml, 250ml, and 500ml bottles with the transition of 1L bottles set to be introduced later in the year. The campaign has already resulted in diverting over three million plastic bottles from coastlines.
Prevented Ocean Plastic
Prevented Ocean Plastic is currently being collected within 50km of an ocean coastline or major waterway in Indonesia, the world’s second-largest plastic polluter after China. The country produces 3.2 million tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste annually, with 1.29 million tonnes ending up in the sea. To put that into perspective it’s the equivalent equivalent to the weight of around 19,000 Boeing 737 airplanes or approximately 5.7 million adult elephants.
Every time customers buy a product in a bottle marked with the Prevented Ocean Plastic trademark, LUSH says, ‘they’re helping to protect marine ecosystems and the coastal communities who are at the forefront of the effects of ocean plastic pollution.’
The recycled material is currently available in LUSH stores across the UK, Germany and Croatia with plans to expand to North America and Japan later this year.
With a focus on using recycled materials and minimising waste, the vibrant brand has been offering fans a ‘naked’ product range that requires no packaging for many years while also using 100 per cent recycled PET for their clear bottles for more than a decade.
LUSH Co-Founder, Mo Constantine, a pioneer in the packaging-free space, has invented many now-mainstream naked products, such as the shampoo bar in 1988, the bath bomb in 1989, and the bubble bar in 1995.
In 2023 alone, LUSH manufactured an impressive 2,712,842 shampoo bars globally, successfully preventing the use of over 8 million plastic bottles.
Customers in 17 markets can also ensure that, when they have finished packaged LUSH products, the pots and bottles are returned through the ‘Bring it Back’ scheme where it is responsibly recycled. Since launching the project in 2021, over 2 million individual items have been returned to LUSH stores globally.
