I remember when I was a kid my Nana used to tell me stories of the days when she and her friends would go out hunting for ‘pop bottles’, collect them and take them back to a local shop to exchange for money. I suppose in many ways, they were the early days of recycling.
Of course, we are more knowledgeable and sophisticated in the ways we care for our planet, councils are making the push to help encourage us all to be greener and recycle more.
But I can’t help feel that the idea of returning your ‘pop bottle’ was a touch of genius, and if I was a kid now, and that was still running, I’d be collecting them all day long.
And that brings us to the BRING IT BACK SCHEME running throughout LUSH stores. In some ways it’s similar to what kept my Nana busy when she was a little girl.
Think of it as a deposit scheme, you borrow the packaging and then get your deposit back to spend on your favourite Lush products when you bring it back to your local Lush shop.
The returned packaging is then sent to the Greenhub, Lush’s UK recycling hub, where packaging is processed and sent to their UK partners to be remoulded into new black Lush pots or used as industry feedstock material.
Since the Launch of the Bring It Back Scheme in March last year, Lush customers in the UK have brought back over 569,000 pieces of Lush plastic packaging to their local shops to be recycled (saving over 13 tonnes of plastic going to landfill).
Lush Cardiff customers were bringing back 9,058 pieces of packaging in 2021 making them one of the top 3 shops for the Bring It Back Scheme in the UK, next to Lush London Oxford Street and Bristol.
Lush Co-Founder and Product Inventor Rowena Bird said……
“We are the difference in the cosmetic industry, we have the ideas and the passion, it’s then about making those ideas a reality by getting everyone to join in. So spread the word, let’s put some positivity into plastic, after all it’s not plastic that’s the baddy, we’re the baddies when we don’t reduce, reuse and recycle it! Don’t be a baddy, be a Lushie and claim your 50p deposit!”
This is how the scheme works……
The Bring It Back scheme will join Lush’s pre-existing fresh face mask scheme allowing customers to bring back five items of Lush plastic packaging in exchange for a fresh mask. This existing scheme sees over 500k pots come back to the Greenhub each year. They also offer a Knot Swap scheme where customers can return their Lush labelled Knot Wraps (their reusable alternative to traditional gift wrap) in exchange for 50% off another Knot Wrap of the same size.
At Lush the majority of plastic packaging used is from recycled and recyclable plastic. However, they want to take even more ownership of their plastic packaging and ensure their bottles, pots and tubs are given the new life they should have.
Rae Stanton-Smithson from Lush Earthcare said……..
“We are working hard to offer people the ultimate waste-free shopping experience. We continue to invent revolutionary naked products, unique packaging materials, work on reusable plastic packaging items as well as looking into refilling options for the future. This recycling scheme is another step on our path to leaving the world Lusher than we found it.
By moving towards a deposit-style scheme, whereby Lush customers know that they are ‘renting’ the packaging and can simply return it when they are finished, we keep the responsibility of waste-reduction and resource recycling as a company responsibility. All we need our customers to do is simply return their empties to us – we’ll take care of the rest.”
For more details on the BRING IT BACK SCHEME go HERE. And you can check out our other features below.
