Lovely piece on the Independant

Because you're worth it...

... or so the beauty industry says, in defence of its costly and wasteful packaging. Time to think outside the box?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/because-youre-worth-it-808478.html

By Ian Johnston and Susie Mesure

Sunday, 13 April 2008

Their contents promise "miracle" ingredients, extracted from the deep ocean or the heart of a volcano, with the power to bestow "new life" on ageing mortals. Welcome to the hype of the beauty cream world, epitomised by the lavish wrapping swaddling what are essentially moisturising lotions often encased in more than six times their own weight of packaging.

Elaborate pumping systems with multiple washers, springs and moulded plastic parts; thick glass jars hiding like Russian dolls within multiple cardboard boxes; and golden test tubes peeking out of transparent presentation cases – all routinely encase just 50ml of cream, which is less than the contents of a single egg.

Beauty creams have become the latest flashpoint in the environmental campaigners' battle against excess packaging, with UK trading standards officers lining up to prosecute the worst perpetrators. Brands from Crème de la Mer and La Prairie at the top of the luxury spectrum down to the Olays and L'Oréals at the lower end are all feeding a multibillion-pound global industry that is soaring in value, despite concern at the amount of waste clogging up landfill sites.

The cosmetics packaging industry was worth £6.7bn to manufacturers worldwide in 2005 and is tipped to grow by more than 10 per cent to £7.5bn by 2009. Nearly two-thirds of all cosmetics packaging is made from plastic, with around one-fifth made from paper.

Figures from Lush, a soap maker and cosmetics company that shuns packaging, show that packaging often makes up more than 80 per cent of a product's total weight. Mark Constantine, Lush's founder, said: "Packaging is unnecessary, bad for the environment and uneconomic. If you get rid of it, then manufacturers will have more money to spend on the content and you get more product."

Trewin Restorick, director of the environmental campaign group Global Action Plan, said cosmetics were often "excessively packaged to make a very small amount of content look alluring". He called on shoppers to put pressure on the worst offenders, which tend to be the most luxurious brands, by boycotting their products. "Consumers can really start to shift the industry if they move towards companies like Lush and Aveda and away from these overly packaged items," he said.

Trading standards officers said companies were guiltier than ever of over-packaging their products, despite an industry-wide crackdown three years ago. Christine Heemskerk, trading standards officer at Surrey county council, said a new investigation into the industry was "possible", warning that the worst offenders could be prosecuted under existing laws against excess packaging.

The cosmetics industry relies on the "less is more" principle to boost its bottom line, according to marketing experts. "That's an absolutely golden rule. The grander the brand, the less you get. The 'what a lot you get' principle is downmarket. People want to imply this is very, very valuable stuff," said Peter York.

A spokeswoman for the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA) defended the industry. "A cosmetic product has a very long life and it has to be in a robust and durable package to maintain it in good order. The packaging for our industry is an absolutely vital component.

Lush Town - Back to the Ol' Days

There's this new movie out there about a certain Lush Town, where missing products are about to be found!
This idea of retro products: going back to the past to unearth something current desires are asking for could be extended to other aspects of our lives. Here are past habits I wish it would become mainstream again:
* Electric milk floats doing milk rounds and delivering bottles that are used an average of 20 times (at Lush head quarters, we have the privilege of having that service available) and having the option of oat milk;
* Coppicing wood as fuel and building materials. I found lots of ancient tree circles not far from my house in Bournemouth. They indicate ancient woodland from a time when local woodlands were big providers of resources and were regularly coppiced;
* Eating locally and in season, regarding foreign fruit and veg as somewhat of a treat, rather than taking them for granted;
* Going to your local market with a basket and filling it with unpackaged goods, buying less processed food and building relationships with your local merchants;
* Watermills and windmills, what a lovely way of harnessing the power of nature;
* Sustainable building materials like straw, wood, cob, lime, etc building cement-free constructions that last centuries.

Like digging out the formulas for Retro products, this is a good time to look at how the past can show us how to secure future. Everything on the list is still available today, with a pinch or two of modernisation and convenience. Click on the links above for some of the contemporary reincarnations of past trends and take a greener trip down memory lane.

The Great Big Recycled Family

You really must use liquid shampoo? No luck with solid ones? What about soap? Sure you need a shower gel? Well, in that case let’s make sure we get the packaging right. Our shampoos, conditioners, gels and creams now come snugly packaged in 100% post-consumer recycled pots and bottles.
It all started in November last year, when our Creative Buying Team sourced lovely materials for us, but due to stock levels and lead times, it took a while to make sure that all clear and black bottles, as well as black pots now in shops are the ones made out of the stuff that gets put in recycling bins around the world.
By doing that, we save about 115 tonnes of CO2 (according to WRAP, who helped us work out the figures), or around 20% of our flying emissions. We’re also saving nearly 90 tonnes of virgin plastic or 900 barrels of oil. That plastic can also be recycled again (I’d like to say “and again and again and again”, but plastic, unlike glass, cannot be recycled indefinitely.)
With that we bring our total recycled content to about 90% of all packaging LUSH buy that can be taken home by customers. I worked out that figure by calculating the percentage of recycled material of all the paper, plastic, glass and metal we buy in to wrap our beautiful products. That means that for every one tonne of material we buy, 900kg came from recycled sources. As far as I know, that’s unique in our industry!
This year, I’m expecting we’ll buy over 470 tonnes of recycled material, that’s nearly the same we send to be recycled and much more than we send to landfill (at the factory, that is). There’s a new term for that: Waste Neutral, we are buying at least as much recycled as we’re recycling.
Buying recycled creates a market for recycled material and adds value, turning recycling into a profitable business; therefore, getting more people to join in, invest and help it to evolve.
Also, to make it just that bit easier, we’re asking customers to bring their black pots back in order to get a free fresh facemask. Five pots may get you a flawless complexion and a fit planet.
Pots and bottles are the new members of a growing family: carrier bags, paper bags, aluminium tins, gift wrapping paper, paper ribbons, card boxes, tags, inserts, Lush Times, light-box displays and more. They are our big recycled family, some real trailer trash! Recycled trailer trash, I should say.
Like every respectable family, we have our black sheep. Labels and greaseproof paper are quite rebellious. But in this family, the naughty bunch are the ones that are still virgin. If you can take their virginity away and make them recycled, please let us know and we’ll arrange the dowry.

This Easter, Celebrate Life!

Even if Easter is not part of your culture, let us take our precious time off to celebrate all living things, the natural cycle of birth, life and death and how our interaction with our environment can foster the former or the latter.
Like every commemorative date, we celebrate by consuming food and drinks, giving presents and congregating with our family and friends.
Just as we take into consideration how we will get somewhere (and come back) and we put some thought to plan the time, transport, route, etc, so should we do the same for all the other things we consume during the festive period (and every other day of the year). Have we thought: about how our food, drink and gifts get to us; how they were made and where they came from; where our money is going to and what we are financing? And ultimately, what happens when we've used it all up?
A nice concept that I like to use to think about consumption is that for everything we buy, we are making little investments in our present and our future. What do we want to invest in?
I want to invest my money in things that won't have a big impact on the our environment, those that will mean we are making small steps to reduce poverty or social problems and those which will translate into respect for humans and animals.
That's how big a statement everything we purchase makes: from that morning latte to choosing your holidays, including your cosmetics.
So have a look at your Easter table and see if it makes you feel proud. See what kind of little investments you're making and if the things you're supporting are in line with your values.
If you happened to walk into a Lush shop this Easter and picked up one of our Easter Eggs, make sure they go to a good home and will be used throughly!
During Easter alone, we create an extra 8,000 tonnes of waste just from Easter Egg packaging!
At Lush, we were careful to use as little packaging as possible for our eggs. None of the contents are individually wrapped and the film is a compostable celullose film that will quickly biodegrade in your home compost or buried under the soil.
The cellulose comes from sustainable sources of wood. The company has also planted a 3,000-tree woodland near their manufacturing unit and have done a thorough life cycle assessment of their product. We like to know where our money is going to.
At Lush we like to help you find out what exactly you're buying, where it comes from and make sure it is appropriate to your needs, so that you really know what the little investments you're making when shopping are truly buying.

The Lovely People on the Path

One of the many joys of my job is meeting people who care.
I've just come off the phone having an almost one hour chat, out of office hours, with the guy who runs the place where some of the waste from our factory goes to.
We couldn't remember today how we came to meet, probably some networking in the waste trade.
From the first time I saw him I empathised with him. I can usually tell the good guys from the bad guys (and have at times, chosen the latter at my own risk ☺ ). Well, he runs this recycling tip which started as skip hire for builders and then evolved into general waste and recycling business. His recycling rate for the yard is 90%!
That means that everything that comes to him is sorted, stripped and salvaged... then turned into something else.
My favourite part when he calls is discussing the ins and outs of the trade. He does it in such a lovely way that many sentences are punctuated by "so your waste can have a low carbon footprint", or "we were going to take it to Slough, but just think of the footprint".
For him to recycle his “bad” wood (contaminated with paint, varnish, etc), he has to pay for his good wood to be taken away. He could easily make more money by selling his good wood and landfilling the bad. People who choose to make less money to follow the best environmental route figure very high up my list.
He's looked into solar-powered lights for the outside of the warehouse, but kept being put off by people saying it was prohibitively expensive.
He feels that it's part of his duty as a waste contractor to help the clients reduce their footprint. So he recommends easy ways of compacting waste, in order to for them to have fewer collections.
That's the kind of thing that just brightens my day! People that regardless of their trade in life are doing their best to do their job in an ethical and caring way.
I think it's our duty as a company to support people like that and make sure that the money we pay for services goes to the hands of such inspiring folk.
Just wanted to share that with someone. :-)

2007 in a Nutshell

So, one more year is finished. As I complain every year that ends, where did time go? I always have this feeling that time passed and we still haven't managed to do all that which is necessary for the sense of urgency that's looming about. But there is also some sense of accomplishment, sense that we had a good year at Lush and that we are on the right track for ensuring a more sustainable business model that respects people, animals and the environment.
I thought I'd list a few highlights of the year and share some of the work we did:


* Naked Campaign:
100 of our lovely members of staff showed some flesh in July to campaign against excessive packaging and to show that there is an alternative. In the shops, we promoted our naked, unpackaged products through promotions and staff awareness.

* Packaging is Rubbish on Channel 4:
Mark Constantine, the big boss, did an excellent program on Channel 4 discussing our addiction to packaging, how packaging costs the environment and how it costs us a lot of money, too. He showed that for the best-selling shower gel brand, packaging costs 2x or 3x more than the raw materials.

* Palm-oil free soap base:
2007 was also year we made a major industry breakthrough, by working alongside the researched at Kay's Soap (in the picture on the left) we launched the first palm-oil free soap base to be done on large scale. In 2007 we launched only one soap with that base, but have now tested it with all other soaps and we hope to roll out in the whole range in the next few months.

* New Packaging:
We introduced some new and exciting packaging like the popcorn for filling our mail order parcels and gift boxes. We also replaced the bubble-wrap we used internally for something a lot more sustainable: crumpled recycled paper from Easypack. We gave a lot more thought to finding more environmentally packaging and looked into new and recycled materials coming to the shops this January.

* Eco-friendly gifts:
We printed our wrapping paper on 100% post-consumer recycled paper using vegetable inks. New paper ribbons were introduced and some of the items like ballistics and bubble bars went in the box naked, avoiding extra bags. We've wrapped our big naked gifts: Easter Eggs and Supersize Lush Pud in compostable cellulose film. The factory where the gifts are made also ran on 100% renewable energy with Ecotricity this Christmas.

* Green Helpers:
Some shops have one Green Heper, some have a team of them: keen and engaged members of staff, who encourage others to be green and ensure that shops are run to good environmental standards. They come up with great ideas from bringing organic soup to other members of staff to campaigning to get other shops recycling. We also met locally at four different eco places around the country to get everyone inspired and connected.

* Compost at the Factory:
In July, after an arduous search for a waste contractor who would take our organic waste, we started a compost scheme in the factory. All of our veg and fruit peel, herbal infusions, unpopped kernels from popping our own popcorn, floor sweepings, waste solid products gets composted. We produce about one tonne of organic waste per week that we are now diverting from landfill. Our organic waste goes to Eco-composting as part of their in-vessel composting operations. We will continue to avoid landfill as much as possible.

* Bio-diesel from chip fat:
The delivery company that transport goods to shops within 250km of our factory bought a kit for making their own bio-diesel from chip fat! They ran trials and used it in the trucks used for Lush. At the moment, there are problems with the manufacturers of the lorries, who claim they will only guarantee vehicles using 5% bio-diesel. We'll join in the fight and put some pressure to ensure this lovely initiative goes ahead as planned.

*Freight:
We have also been actively reducing the amount of air freight we use. Only a tiny percentage of our raw materials is air-freighted. We still have to air-freight very expensive essential oils which cost many thousand pounds a litre, but that is also being looked into and hopefully we will soon have a no air-freight policy!

In 2008, we keep on reducing the footprint of our processes, reducing our waste and showing that sustainability can be colourful, fun and nice-smelling!

Green Christmas by Ruth

I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas season
When all fairy lights are LED for a reason
So that in future we may still have some snow
And the world's sea levels are kept safely low

Celebrate locally, don't travel too far
Visit by train, please don't take a car
To all those around you, giv'em a kiss and a hug
Or low carbon gifts that will make you feel smug

If you want to eat, drink and be merry
Order some local organically grown berries
Don't be haunted by Christmas animal ghosts
Spare the turkey and instead make a healthy nut roast

When it comes to gift-wrapping, do like your gran
Keep all your ribbons and use them again
Use recycled paper or re-use a box
Give naked gifts that create a shock

Re-usable bags are this year's must
Take them with you don't let them gather dust
Gift re-giving is no longer frowned upon
If it's something you don't need
Please pass it on

After the jolly good times have come and gone
Act swiftly at the crack of the dawn
When the kids are all tired and sound asleep
Chop the old tree into your compost heap

Put your decorations somewhere far from the trash
Come next year, swap for you neighbour's old stash
Send all your cards to be recycled and reborn
They will return as loo roll or maybe soft porn

Be good to the planet, buy less and think more
May you have lots of love and what you ask for!

Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas

Now it’s a good time for us to remember that Christmas is not just about buying too much, eating too much and drinking too much. Quite the contrary, now it’s the right time to reflect about what impact our consuming has on the world and all the billions of creatures sharing this little planet. So before parting with more money, stop think about how those pounds will contribute to life on Earth.

Green Gifts
For your last minute gifts, buy something that will not cost the Earth. At Lush, you can find some lovely products, full of natural and fresh ingredients. For the shops that are in the South up till Birmingham, products are delivered in lorries running on bio-diesel from waste oil. You can also buy a virtual gift, a charity donation, a tree, write someone a poem, buy art, buy services (massage, for example), etc.

Gift Wrapping
Make your own! Smoothie tetrabricks make fantastic gift-boxes. Re-use wrapping from other gifts your received, put them in a re-usable bag, wrap with magazines, unwanted posters or wrap them in a scarp or a piece of fabric. If you want to avoid the hassle of wrapping your own gifts, Lush wraps our gifts in 100% recycled paper, printed with vegetable inks. Choose the ones with a paper ribbon and buy a It’s a Wrap instead. There’s also Supersized Lush Pud - the box is a giant bath ballistic and the wrapping is compostable.

Christmas Cards
I’d say, send everyone an e-card. But because in the UK, there’s such a huge tradition of card giving, make sure someone benefited from your purchase (charity cards, recycled cards) and in January, recycle them through the Woodland Trust scheme. Also, this has nothing to do with being green, but it’s lovely to actually express your feelings for someone and write something meaningful from the heart instead of just “Merry Christmas”!

Fairy Lights
Gotta be LEDs. Also, always turn them off when you go to bed. Use a timer if needed. In these times of Climate Change, with renewable energy in the UK not being able to meet demand, wasting electricity on fairy lights almost feels criminal.

Christmas Tree
Natural trees from certified sources (FSC) are always better. If you’ve bought a natural tree, then make sure it gets composted after Christmas. Check with your local authority for special post-Christmas collection schemes. If you’ve bought an artificial tree, pack it safely, protected from moisture, label it and store it somewhere you will remember, so you can use it again next year!

Green Decorations
Do it like Lush, make your Christmas decorations out of waste. We even have a lovely Christmas Tree called the The Joy Tree, made out of plastic bottles (see picture above - stolen from the artist's blog). They were made by Inga Hamilton, a fabulous artists that can turn any spent material into beautiful art. Check her website and learn how to make the tree. Go into a Lush shop, just to check our decorations out, they're great.
Use the popcorn from a Lush Gift, cinnamon sticks, dried oranges, natural holly, etc. Make a pomander!

Peaceful Food
Buy local and organic! Christmas is a time to celebrate life, so have lots of living and natural food on your table. There’s still time to get an organic box! Choose Fairtrade items that will ensure someone on the other side of the world can also have a bountiful Christmas. Choose spare a turkey this Christmas and make some lovely nut roast, if you must, get a free range and organic one, even if that means spending a little bit less on presents.

So that’s it… (excuse me, I’ll be bit hippy here, if you can’t take it, please stop reading now).

Have a lovely Christmas, full of happiness and compassion. Celebrate the Solstice, nature and life. I wish we all take the time this Christmas to develop a sense of community, of peace and of urgency in tackling the problems that are causing pain and distress to our fellow beings. May we be wise to recognise that happiness cannot exist here while there’s suffering elsewhere and that our planet’s resources may be limited, but they are enough if we only take our fair share.

Green Helpers - The apples of my eyes

Last post I wrote how wonderful it would be to have a set of strong governmental policies coupled with strong individual will. Well, the Green Helpers project is Lush’s way of tapping that potential, passion and drive to make small (and big) changes at local level.
These days, every corner one looks, there will be scores of people concerned about the environment and feeling frustrated about not being able to do enough. If you give these green warriors the incentive (and a badge) to let all of their green passion loose, then you can sit and watch marvellous things unfold.
Every Lush shop (or nearly every shop) has a strong-willed, committed Green Helper. They are responsible for maintaining a good environmental standard in the shop, nagging fellow members of staff and driving change towards a sustainable future.
This project started this year and has been very fruitful. I hope to be able to feature some Green Helpers and what they’ve been involved with in this space.
In October we had four lovely days out and we visited different eco projects around the country. The idea was to get together and exchange information, learn loads and feel very inspired.

We visited the following places (click on names to see pictures)

York Environmental Centre
An environment centre in the city in the middle of a nature reserve that grew where there used to be a landfill site. We looked at some eco-houses near-by, saw the biggest strawbale building in Europe, visited composting toilets, saw solar panels and small wind turbines. We also spent lots of time coming up with new ideas and a green training session. Green Helpers told me everything they've been doing and I was very impressed. From sending questionnaires to all shops in their shopping district to getting everyone recycling, doing small campaigns in their shops, buying lunch in bulk to avoid packaging, etc.

Earthship Brighton
This is a stunning off-grid building that has rainwater collection, is naturally thermally-controlled (walls made out tyres guarantee the heat is absorbed by the thermal mass when it's hot and released when it's cold). We also saw organic and permaculture gardens, a massive array of solar panels and eco building techniques. We also spent time discussing evironmental best practice and an environmental standard for the shops.

Findhorn Eco Village
The Scottish Green Helpers and I went to Findhorn village near Inverness to look at one of the oldest eco-villages in the world. The first family settled there in 1959. The most amazing thing we saw there was something called "Living Machine". There are only twelve of those in the world, so it was a real privilege to be taken on a tour of one. Living Machines are used to treat sewage. The one we saw can handle human waste from 330 people. The water at the end of the process comes out completely clear and safe to European bathing standard levels. They use a variety of plants, bacteria and all sorts of organisms to digest and filter the sewage.

Center for Alternative Technology in Wales
In Wales, we had a look around CAT. They focus on energy, so we had a chance to see wind turbines, hydroelectric power, whole roofs cladded in solar panels. We also learned how wave and tidal power work and saw a super energy efficient house. The site is on an old quarry and it has a rail lift that is powered solely by water. We also had time to do a bit of training, discuss ideas and find out what everyone has been up to. One Green Helper has been making bags out of old aprons for staff to use when going shopping at lunch time!

Is This the First Day of Our Last Days?

This is the first day of the Bali talks, where delegates from 180 countries will meet to pretty much discuss the future of humanity.
It's incredible to think that the lives of billions will depend on the foundations laid in Indonesia for consensus to be reached on a pact to follow the Kyoto protocol. I believe this is probably one of the most crucial moments in our History. If courage, compassion and discernment fail our leaders, then there will be difficult times ahead of us.
The agreements need to strongly bind countries to strict targets, equitable allocation of emissions and a realistic price for carbon. If any of these are watered down or left aside, we're in trouble.
But what if policies and governmental leadership are not enough to take us to a safe level of temperature rise? Can individuals step up and create the necessary change?
I would like to think we can, if only so that there's still the light of hope to guide us through.
If Climate Change has had one positive effect, it is that of exposing our interconnectedness. It has become apparent, more than ever, that whatever we do where we are almost immediately affects the lives of people on the other side of the planet. Our cravings for dirty energy, polluting meat and cheap goods cost the lives of many, the extinction of some and the absolution of none.
Connections that were never made before have become crystal clear. We now know that the palm oil in our food, soaps and fuel will cause the destruction of Southeast Asia's forests and the extinction of the Orang-utan. Most of us have learned that the Amazon is being chopped down so beef cattle can graze and soya can be produced. Then there are all the floods, typhoons and other weather catastrophes filling our papers with human tragedies at an increasing pace only compared to the increased pace of consumption of 4x4s, cheap flights and plasma TVs.
Now what if we can achieve both? Imagine those in power having the wisdom and the vision to create a strong legally-binding base upon which we can exercise all our human values like compassion and respect for life. Am I being too idealistic here? Perhaps.
Here's what I would love to see discussed and agreed on for a future pact:
- strong renewable energy targets;
- incentives for developing countries to stop rainforest destruction;
- equal allocation of emissions, so developed countries will have to use the money and technology they have, while poorer nations can continue to develop and improve life standards;
- a fair and strict carbon trading scheme and personal carbon quotas;
- a ban on new coal power stations that can't capture and store carbon;
- strategies for adaption and for supporting climate refugees.
So, while they talk, instead of waiting, let's act! About 45% of emissions in the UK come from individuals, rather than businesses. I'm sure we have all seen lots of lists of what we can do so I don't think it's necessary for me to mention them here. If you're still not sure what you can do or would like to calculate your carbon footprint:
http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html
http://www.icount.org.uk/
This Saturday there will be Climate March in London. Make yourself heard!
And let's keep an eye on what goes on in Bali, as it's our future they're talking about.

Lit up Christmas

It is very difficult and disturbing to live in the real (and wasteful) world with energy saving eyes. Your blood boils at every corner and you launch disapproving glances towards every careless human being that leaves the toilet lights on. So imagine how difficult it is for me to walk around town during this festive season.
Every lamp post in the town I live in is covered in incandescent coloured light bulbs (the same one government is talking about phasing out in half a decade), there is a huge Christmas tree in the square covered in non-efficient fairy lights and very bright illuminated decorations hang from every available edge, doorway, lamppost, stall, window, etc.
I have also been trying hopelessly to find where the plugs are, switch things off and sabotage these watt-monsters of Christmas.
But I don't want to be a joy-killer. It's ok to use beautiful low-energy LED lights, consuming a few watts only, which can be put on a timer so they are not on all night. There are also scores of colourful decorations that look lovely with no need for background lighting. If you're one of those people who like to make your house visible from the moon at Christmas or make your neighbours green with envy, then how about some solar powered fairy lights?
Go for no lights or green lights so we can still be able to enjoy some snow in the winter.

Power Down!

Today I'll start a little series of posts on energy and saving it.
Lately everyone has been swamped by lots of energy savings tips, so I'll try to look at the practical side of doing what's necessary in these post-fourth assessment times.
I'm going to start with laptops and chargers.
Playing with my electricity meter, I found out that my Macbook when it's off but still plugged in uses 14W of electricity! Just having the charger plugged in with no computer attached to the other end uses the same amount. That also goes for mobile chargers. After it has fully charged your phone, that little plugged in device will continue to sap watt after watt.
Just picture the scene, you wake up, pull your phone of the end of the charger and jump on your bike to go to work, all happy about how environmentally friendly you are, oblivious to that little vampire you left plugged in that will spend idle hours sucking expensive and polluting power. Outrageous.
That's just silly waste of energy, cutting it out doesn't require skills, funding or much effort, but it requires creating a habit. So when you turn your laptop off at the end of the day, remember to switch the power charger off as well. Same goes for ipod, mobile and battery chargers.
"Switch off at the mains" should become the new energy saving mantra!
Come on, repeat with me:
OM SWITCH OFF AT THE MAINS OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI

Vegan Offsetting

It is quite easy to feel powerless when we have a huge task ahead of us such as the incredible challenge of minimising the damage from manmade climate change. It’s difficult to believe that we can actually make a difference or that all our efforts do matter.
Other times, we find that we are already doing everything in our power to help or that other more beneficial measures are out of our control, like living in a rented flat with no insulation and no double-glazing.
However, there is one thing that is fairly straight forward, reasonably easy, cheap and that is completely under our control; that is avoiding meat and dairy products.
From a more honest and slightly radical point of view, it is inconceivable that there are still people that care deeply for the environment, but who still eat meat and dairy. Last year I met an ecologist who lives in the Amazon and has worked all his life against deforestation. His message was clear; the forest is being cut for pasture or soya to feed animals. He told me lots of destitute people living in the depths of the rainforest dream of the day they will own a piece of land, raise some cattle and pocket the money from that valuable commodity. Those dreams are only dreamt because there is a demand.
But it’s not just about the deforestation. Cattle is directly responsible for methane emissions, a gas 23 times more potent than CO2. Animals bred for food are responsible for more emissions that the world’s transportation combined. If you take all steps of the process into account: breeding animals, transporting them, slaughtering, refrigerating the flesh/milk, etc; one calorie of meat protein uses ten calories of fossil fuels, releasing more than ten times as much carbon dioxide as one calorie of plant protein.
Tomorrow, November 1st, is World Vegan Day. At Lush, we’ve done an internal campaign where staff signed up to go vegan for a day. Many are going vegan for the whole week and hopefully some will stay like that. About 4% of Lush staff are vegan, ten times more than the national average.
It’s been published, by the University of Chicago, that being vegan saves 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year (more than giving up your car and the same as three medium-haul flights). So let’s say 500 Lush staff go vegan for one day, that’s roughly 2 tonnes of carbon saved there. If they remained vegan for a year, collectively we would save 750 tonnes of carbon, more than a year’s worth of Lush flights!
So there you go, an easy way of making a contribution to the Planet, to animals, to the forest and to your health!

CIWM Awards

Oh, oh, I forgot to say we have been shortlisted for the Chartered Institution of Waste Management awards in the Sustainable Retailer of the Year category. Hilary and I will be going to the ceremony tomorrow. We are competing against ASDA and DSG International (Currys, Dixons, etc). Not very nice guys to compete against, but hopefully we'll win. Fingers crossed. I'll see if I can post a picture of Hilary and I in smart business attire :-) We should get an award for that!

Wash your Hands Green with Orangutan-friendly Soap

I very often get emails asking whether we use Palm Oil in our products from people kindly sharing their concerns about the deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia and the ensuing consequences to local wildlife and to global climate. Even though cosmetics are responsible for just 7% of the world’s production of Palm Oil, this is another one of those thorny issues where everything we can do to help, no matter how little it seems in the grand scheme of things, is important and should be encouraged.

We do use palm oil in our products, but we do not take this matter lightly. We have spent the past two years researching the subject as thoroughly as we possibly could. We also visited the very forests that are in the line of the devastation and we saw endless miles of palm plantation covering most arable land in Indonesia and Malaysia. Even the threatened orang-utans received our visit and in 10 years’ time there may be none left to visit. What we saw shocked us and gave us a first-hand experience of the scale of the destruction. What we couldn’t see, however, were the less obvious, but even more catastrophic effects of rainforest clearance on the world’s climate. If losing one species, like the orang-utans, makes everyone cringe, what about losing 1,000,000 species by 2050 due to climate chaos, land use change and destruction of habitats?

While all of that hellish adventure was happening on-site, behind the scenes, in the labs of Harry Potter (Wesley, our R&D wizard) and in every soap manufacturer in the UK, another kind of struggle was going on. How can we make a commercial soap base without using Palm Oil? We tried making our soap base with various mixes of oils, but it proved too difficult for large-scale manufacturing. The next option was to work alongside companies already making a vegetable soap base and propose to them the challenge of making a palm-oil-free one. One of the manufacturers rose up to the challenge and came up with a saponified mixture of rapeseed oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil.

So our first soap using that base was born, we decided to name it Greenwash as homage to all those people out there who think planting a tree will actually offset the emissions from their weekend away flying to Sicilly, or to our government, who’s nearly drowning in a sea of oil and nuclear lobby, chained to the iron ball of economic growth.

We are testing the new base with all of our existing soap formulae and hope to phase out the current base within the next year. So yes, our products still have palm oil, but we are working hard to make sure we keep those levels to a sustainable minimum. Besides that, through our Charity Pot, we have also given financial help to the Sumatran Orang-utan Society, working locally to save our close cousins from extinction.
As I said at the beginning, cosmetics only account for 7% of total palm oil consumption, but is found in 1 in every 10 food products. These are other things we can do to reduce our palm oil consumption:

*Eat less processed foods;
*Avoid hydrogenated fats;
*Pressure manufacturers to take action.

I’m not even going to touch the Agrofuel (a more suitable name for biofuel) issues heres
, hopefully another time. The most thorough document I’ve read on Agrofuels is here, not suitable for bedtime reading. If after reading you then need some hope for the future, try this www.zerocarbonbritain.org.

Corn is Pop

When rethinking our parcels, Jill, one of our Mail Order gurus, had this idea of using popcorn to fill the boxes and make sure our products would arrive safely in the hands of our customers.
After some research, we had a bespoke popcorn machine made for us that could produce 32 kg of popcorn per hour or 2,127 kg per week! And would we need all of that when we decided to use it to fill our gift boxes, as well!
Popcorn goes into our parcels and most of our gifts as a replacement for the shredded paper we used. The paper used (and still present in some gifts) was end-of-the-reel and fairly local, so not much environmental damage there; however, popcorn is 60% lighter than the shreddie, it protects the products a lot better and it much more fun than just boring shredded paper.
The other clear advantage of popcorn is that we are transporting unpopped kernels, which are concentrated and compact. Popcorn vendors make their money by buying per weight and selling by volume. My guesstimate is that about 1 litres of kernels will be transformed into 35 litres (0.035 cubic metres) of packing material (I later googled it and found that popcorn have an expansion rate of 36-44 to 1). To make these numbers more practical, I’ll use my lorry metaphor again. If we were transporting say polystyrene packing material (those puffy things), we would need 35 lorries on road carrying the same volume as would potentially be in 1 lorry of kernels, after being popped. Still following?
What’s more, last year we bought roughly 70 tonnes of shredded paper to fill of our gifts and parcels. To get the same volume in popcorn, we would need only half that tonnage in kernels. That also means our parcels are about 10% lighter.
Putting our products in popcorn also meant that we could reduce the number of plastic bags used to wrap individual items. Products like ballistics and bubble bars are happy to sit naked in the popcorn. Sticky products like massage bars and some of the soaps still have to go in bag, but we are working on changing that, as well. We felt we could reduce the number of bags used by half, which should mean at least 2 million plastic bags saved, possibly more.
Popping the corn is an energy-intensive business, but so is making polystyrene puffs or the now commonly found biodegradable starch version. The latter goes through an extrusion process using very high temperatures and high pressure. Turning a tree into paper is also energy intensive, but that is done far from our eyes, so it’s not as immediately obvious as the popcorn. The good thing about popping it in our factory is that we have control over our electricity supplier, which is something difficult to have over up and down our supply chain. As of January 08, when our current contract finishes, we will move that building to a green supplier and should then have wind-powered popcorn.
After you’ve used you box contents, popcorn makes a lovely addition to anyone’s compost. I personally wouldn’t recommend eating it, unless you like eating soap, as it absorbs some of the Lush scents and you get slightly fragrant popcorn.
If you don’t have a compost heap, it’s time to start one. Go to Compost Now for some advice or if you don’t have a garden, friendly microorganisms can help turn your food into lovely liquid fertilizer. Try these websites and get some kitchen digesters this Christmas: Living Soil, The Green Shop. Oh, don’t forget nagging your council for them to set up a food waste collection scheme! If you’ve got kids or need some relaxing time, use your imagination and make some pop(corn) art.

Filling Station of the Future

Just to keep me going on the transport issue, I was shown a glimpse of the future in Vienna. I saw in real life what I had only read about and dreamt of. The Zero Carbon Britain report mentions a future where transportation is electric, electricity is renewable, hence mobility is CO2-free and there it was, accidentally stumbled upon while I was walking around the city.
About 18 sq.m of PV cells, mounted on a platform moving on two axis to make most of the available sunlight, very much like sunflowers. The captured energy is transformed into electricity and store in a large battery (I think we are still a couple of years away from small ones), which is used to charge up 20 electric motorbikes overnight. These babes do 0 – 80 km/h in 6.8 seconds and with the stored power of the sun can go 100km before they need another drink of gold.
At the present, the stand was a demonstration only. You could take the bike for a test-drive or ride with one of the available pilots. Unfortunately, I got there too late and couldn’t do either.
I was told they will go for sale next year and bikes will be a hefty €9,000. But hey, want inexpensive zero-carbon transport? Then go for foot and pedal power!

To find out more: http://www.solonhilber.at

Bike Valet in Cambridge

Today I received the wonderful news that the Bike Valet service went really well in Cambridge. The city is well-known for its student population and consequently is quite bike-friendly.
The manager Dawn told me customers were very impressed with the service! They also re-used some of the A-boards and made signs which were paraded around town.
They even pimped a customer's wheelchair! Cambridge's Green Helper Kalvin puts his heart into every task and has been doing some great work. They are even thinking of doing a re-run of the bike valet service! Hope other shops had a good day, as well!
Here is their day in pictures:

The smell of a traffic-free world

I've been meaning to write about trasnport for a while, since the lovely days spent at Climate Camp. But, as usual, my natural procrastinating tendency keeps putting it off until a pile of events threatens to bury me under and I feel the slightly forceful inspiration to go over a theme. This seems to happen all too often.
The said pile of transported-related events started at the Camp and stacked up to a 28-hour train journey to Budapest. These lines were hand-written on a night train (and typed at a hotel in Budapest) somewhere half way between Koln and Vienna.
At some point between these two events, I got knocked off my bike by a car and at Lush, we started a two-week public transport campaign to coincide with the launch of the new enviro commuter's must-have: Go Green solid perfume and body spray. The cherry on the icing was the not-so-sweet presentation, in London, of IPCC's working group 2 findings and their contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.
I'll break these events into individual posts for the sake of clarity and so people can read what interests them only.
In case you this is the only post you read, I'll go into the advertising bit first.

To celebrate the launch of the new fragrance and reward customers that choose pedal power over cars, we're giving a £1 discount on Go Green fragrance if you show us your bike (helmet might convince the sales assistant) or valid public transport ticket/oyster card. But better than the discount is our bike valet service this Saturday, September 22nd.



Take your bike to the shop and have it pampered and looked after while you shop. Wouldn't it be fabulous if we, cyclists, got that kind of treatment everywhere? Extra services apart, Go Green is a superb fragrance. It gives you a refreshing and uplifting feeling for when you get off that sweaty, packed train or head for a meeting after pedaling miles.
It was inspired by Rebecca Lush, a long-standing and influential transport activist, who runs Road Block (now part of Campaign for Better Transport - former Transport 2000). They give support to groups against road expansion and lobby for the improvement of public transport services.
Transport is not a very sexy topic to talk about, especially because everyone loves their car and are not too keen to give it up. Through Charity Pot, we have been brave and funded quite a few groups against road and airport expansion. Cars and planes, to me, are the emblem of individual convenience at the expense of society.
What's more, private cars are responsible for 13% of UK's carbon emissions and, just like air travel, are a source rapidly growing and being heavily overlooked. To make matters worse, 25% of car journeys are under two miles, a distance easily covered by skates, skateboards, bikes, rickshaws, feet, bus, tram, stilts, space hoppers, etc. We don't really need 1.5 tonnes of steel, plastic and rubber with 200 horsepower to cover two miles. Imagine two hundred horses on the streets every time every one of us went to buy bread in the corner shop! (This logic works for visual purposes only...)

First Things First

This is the very first post of what I hope will be an informative, fun and forest-green blog.
In this first post I thought I would write a bit about myself, what I do and the kind of things I hope to share with Lush fans around the world.
Lush, as you probably know, is a serious hardcore ethical company dressed up like a hippy drag queen, which is probably very close to what I am. No, I’m not a drag queen.
I try to combine work, partying, yoga with sleepless hours spent worrying about the state of the planet and how we can get out of the mess we’ve created. Definitely not an easy life.
At Lush, I have a pretty cool job. It is probably the job I’ve always wanted to have, so I hope I don’t screw it up too soon!
I am the company’s Inspirational Environmental Officer – which means that I bring my environmental knowledge to Lush and try to inspire everyone here to take a really active role in making sure that all our environmental measures are followed with enthusiasm and pride!
This job allows me to combine some of my greatest passions in life, and do I have a lot of that! The idea behind creating this space was that I wanted a place to discuss my incongruence, vent my frustration and voice my (strong) opinions outside the walls of Lush, with lots of freedom to say what I want and hopefully not get in trouble for it.
Also, I want to use this space to give frequent updates on the projects I’m working on or have worked on for Lush, so everyone can get a picture of where we’re heading and what've done. I want to discuss current environmental issues and the daily challenges we all have when trying to green ourselves up a bit.
But let’s deviate from the tempting path of this ego trip… this space is really open for anyone. If you have a good idea (it doesn’t have to be that good) for an article, something you’ve seen somewhere that you would like to tell us about, feel free to send me material and I’ll try and get it posted. I expect lots of contribution from Lush fans and the random reader that might bump into this blog while roaming around the net.
Lastly, I’m from Brazil, English is not my first language and it can be hard to truly express oneself in a foreign language. I do appreciate comments on my lack of clarity, sanity or excess of vanity, although the latter has more to do with the rising Capricorn than with the Brazilian blood.