Lee Carpenter, Packaging Buying Lead Link for Lush, the fresh handmade cosmetics retailer, shares his thoughts on the importance of using recycled materials in brand packaging and communication.

Environmental awareness has always been at the heart of Lush. It feeds through to the decisions we make on a daily basis and that includes our selection of sustainable and recycled packaging and paper.

As a leading global ethical beauty retailer, Lush is committed to becoming more sustainable, using our buying power to drive positive change. When using packaging or printed materials are unavoidable, we prefer to use recycled materials.

We rigorously vet all our suppliers to ensure they meet our stringent standards. While Arjowiggins Graphic has a brilliant range of sustainable papers, what really impressed us was the transparency and best practice they have been able to demonstrate through the entire supply chain from deinking to manufacturing processes and distribution.

As a result we use a number of their high quality sustainable papers in both packaging and our consumer communication.

In our year round gift ranges, we use Cocoon Silk for both our gift tags and gift wrap, providing a luxurious feel but with the reassurance that our wrapping is 100% recycled. In addition, our seasonal carrier bags are printed on Cyclus Pack, which is also 100%, recycled. Our store catalogue, Lush Times and The Journal, our editorially focused publication, are both printed on Cyclus Offset, which gives a more natural and recycled feel. We chose page formats for these publications that ensure we can be as economical as we can and use the full extent of the paper without waste.

These are just couple of examples of where our packaging and paper use is helping minimise environmental impact. Using recycled paper can go a long way towards limiting pollution and reducing landfill.

By choosing to use recycled paper for Lush packaging and promotion, rather than a virgin paper, during 2017 we reduced our environmental impact by*: 731,875 kg of landfill, 161,870 kg of CO2 and greenhouse gases, 18,904,094 liters of water, 2,152,245 kWh of energy and 1,189,118 kg of wood.

*Source: Carbon Footprint data evaluated by Labeila Conseil. Virgin Fibres from non-integrated mill data latest European Bref data.