Lush Opens Packaging-Free “Naked” Cosmetics Shop in Manchester

Lush store

(Photo: Lush UK’s new Naked packaging-free shop opened recently in Manchester. Credit: Lush UK on Facebook)

by | Jan 28, 2019

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(Photo: Lush UK’s new Naked packaging-free shop opened recently in Manchester. Credit: Lush UK on Facebook)

British cosmetics retailer Lush opened a new packaging-free shop in Manchester this month, adding to existing “Naked” shops in Milan and Berlin. The company sells haircare, skincare, bath bombs, shower gels, and other beauty products without packaging in an effort to reduce plastic waste in the cosmetic industry.

The packaging-free Manchester store, located on Market Street, sells beauty products that customers can place in paper bags made from 100% recycled material or reusable metal tins, Edie.net reported. Lip scrubs are sold in glass pots and lipstick refills have a beeswax coating, the outlet explained. In addition, the store offers regenerative shampoo bar containers made from sustainable cork.

“We’ve opened this up these spaces for debate, and we’re also inviting NGOs and activist groups that work on reducing waste and reducing plastic pollution into the store, so we hope that it’ll be an education for us and for our customers,” said Lush’s product inventor Alessandro Commisso.

Lush’s Naked shop allows customers to scan products directly at the store using a recently launched app, Packaging News reported. “While still a development experiment feature, ‘Lush Lens’ enables the retailer to bypass plastic packaging by using the phone’s camera and machine learning to recognize products,” the outlet explained. Customers can also use the app to access detailed ingredient info and product demos.

Going “naked” is cheaper for the company because around 40 to 50% of the cost of a product goes on its packaging, a Lush blog post says. “Having that extra money to spend on ingredients really does make a difference,” said Lush product inventor and co-founder Mo Constantine. “The final thing you get is a good price, a good amount of content, no wastage at the end, and it just works incredibly well.”

Although Lush has had packaging-free products available for decades now — Constantine created the shampoo bar in the late 1980s — expanding the concept to an entire store is a more recent trend. Packaging-free stores are on the rise in across Europe and North America, with some encouraging customers to bring their own refillable containers and others offering reusables in-store for purchase.

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