Every day is Giving Tuesday for Lush

Lush is taking giving back to the next level with their Giving Tuesday initiative.

The cosmetics company is participating in the world-wide initiative to give back. Giving Tuesday comes the Tuesday after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and it puts an emphasis on businesses and individuals creating change within their communities. This year, Lush is increasing their year-round initiative.

“Every year all year round when anybody purchases the charity pot, the entire purchase price goes directly to grassroots charities,” said Windsor Devonshire Mall Lush store manager, Heather Iatonna. “So, what we do is we put it all into one pot, and then it gets divvied out through grants that the charities apply for through the charity pot program.”

The Charity Pot is a body lotion made from ethically sourced ingredients from regenerative farms. Instead of sitting back and continuing the same initiative that they do all year round, Lush has doubled their effort for Giving Tuesday.

“What we’re doing is matching all the donations that are made today. So, when anybody buys charity pot today lushes matching that purchase price and donating it to the charities that we’re supporting. But today specifically, we’re supporting five separate charities,” said Iatonna.

The five charities that Lush is supporting for Giving Tuesday are all in an attempt to “provide customers with an opportunity to support Indigenous Peoples in the Andes and the Amazon directly, to hold political leaders accountable for climate action and to support communities most impacted by climate disasters,” according to the company’s website.

The charities chosen by Lush include Amazon Watch, Sunrise Movement, Aliados, Climate Action Network Canada, and ReTreet. All five charities reflect Lush’s values of human and animal rights as well as climate action.

Donations to grassroots charities aren’t the only steps that Lush takes to create a better product for its consumers and to create a sustainable company. Lush also has a recycling program that keeps the plastic packaging out of landfills.

“It’s called the five black pot program. It’s a closed loop recycling program,” said Iatonna. “Because this plastic that we carry, any of our products in the black pots is No. 5 plastic which, typically because of the colour content in the type of plastic it is, can’t get recycled in your bins municipally. So, what we asked you to do is clean the pot and save it, when you have five of any size pots, you bring it back into the shop. And then we exchange that for a fresh face mask out of the fridge.”

After returning the pots, they are sent back to the company’s manufacturers in Vancouver and Etobicoke.

“They manufacture them back into black pots, the lids for our pots and different signs that we use around the shop,” said Iatonna. “So that plastic that we’ve made the pots out of is already post-consumer recycled plastic. But like I said it’s a closed loop so it’s not something that we’re taking from a new plastic. It’s as far from sourced as possible.”

Lush products are hand packaged in Canada and personalized with a sticker donning the name of the employee who packaged it. Lush said in a tweet that they take these initiatives seriously for one reason:

“We believe it’s our responsibility to advocate for animals, people, and the planet continually and to give back to organizations locally and around the world.”

To learn more about Lush and the sustainable initiatives they head, visit www.lush.ca.