The Scented Life: All about fragrance

Lush - Naked!

by Amy on September 4th, 2007

Lush, a love-it-or-hate-it cosmetics/toiletries company with a small but growing presence here in the United States, recently staged a “cheeky” campaign to call attention to something we might not often consider - how the packaging for our cosmetics and other beauty products affects the environment. Their stance, obviously, is the first R - reduce. To this end, they sell “Naked” products, without any packaging.

I’m sure something like this would quickly get shut down in the U.S. (damn our zoning!) but it’s good to see a company doing something about its business practices to help the environment.  For the record, I’m a recycling freak and love clearing space in my shower by using up a bottle of shower gel and then tossing the empty in the recycling bin.

from treehugger:

This week, Lush staff went naked to get the message out: packaging is waste. As employee Wendy Reiding of Wimbledon points out, “the main bits were covered.” Staff wore a white apron with the words “Ask me why I’m naked” as they plied the streets drawing stares and in some cases being shooed back inside by the local constabulary.

Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics has made waves in innovative marketing before, but this week they set a new standard in drawing headlines without spending a single cent on advertising. OK, points given for a good message, cleverly delivered.

But the campaign does leave questions open: for example, why hand out leaflets in a campaign against waste? And is naked the new marketing trend?

Lush has drawn critique from TreeHugger readers for their choices of “safe synthetic” chemicals in their formulations. Also, Lush offers packaging-free solid soaps as a consumer alternative; they offer traditional liquid products in bottles in their product palette as well. (Hence the need for a campaign against packaging: don’t buy our packaged products?)

Nonetheless, Lush has differentiated themselves from the market trend towards liquid soaps, formulating many products into bars, cakes or balls which can be sold without packaging. Some products are cut from a large cake and sold by weight. They even sell massage oils as bars which need to be warmed by rubbing in the hands to release the lubricating essences they contain. So, leaving debate aside, we hope the naked Lush campaign will spread the word: beauty products without packaging are beautiful.

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