Do you ever worry about how much garbage you’re creating when wrapping presents, or washing your hair? Well thinkGood. does. Do you really need to use coloured tissue paper to stuff a gift bag? We thinkNot. Washing your hair doesn’t really create garbage per se, but whatever happens to all those shampoo bottles? Sure they get recycled sometimes, but what if we didn’t use them to begin with? Now I know I sound crazy, but there are socially responsible companies that think like this!

Today we’d like to feature LUSH who makes fresh handmade cosmetics. What makes them so socially responsible you might ask? Well they sell most of their products naked *read no packaging*, and  if they do use packaging its usually biodegradable, or made from recycled materials.

LUSH also has a great gift wrap replacement called Knot Wrap. Inspired by Furoshiki, traditional Japanese knot-wrapping used for carrying toiletries,  Lush stores now encourages customers to have their gifts wrapped in scarves. Whether you buy a scarf from LUSH or DIY this is a great idea to reduce on wasteful packaging! Click here to read more about their responsible packaging.

They also have Charity Pot hand and body cream where 100% of the retail price (minus taxes) goes directly to worthy causes. They’ve sold 18,647 pots so far in North America. With the proceeds, LUSH donates to carefully selected grass roots organizations around the world that support social, environmental and animal rights concerns. Watch the video here to see how they concoct this great product.

Facts:

You can buy about 70% of their products naked like bath bombs, shampoo bars bubble bars, massage bars, body butters, and solid facial cleansers.

Solid products last longer and weigh less than bottled liquids which take more energy to transport. For example, one truckload of LUSH solid shampoo bars is enough for about 800,000 washes. It would take 15 truckloads of liquid shampoo to do the same job.

Less is best. When we can’t eliminate it completely, we look for the simplest packaging to do the job and use post-consumer recycled, recyclable and biodegradable materials whenever possible.

The total recycled content in all LUSH packaging is about 89% (including paper bags, aluminium tins, gift wrap, ribbons, boxes, tags and inserts). That means that for every ton of material bought by LUSH, 900kg come from recycled sources.

Do Good, Feel Good, Live Good,

-Team thinkGood.

Tags: Charity Pot, DIY gift wrap, furoshiki, Knot Wrap, less is best, Lush

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Environment, Shopping Bag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.