While environmentalists demonize plastic, the problem is not actually the material itself – it’s how companies choose to use it. Despite the fact that plastic is a strong and durable product with the potential for years of reuse; it is typically enlisted for single-use packages and disposable items. While ideally, every company that enlists plastic for their throwaway items would start encouraging reuse it seems unlikely to happen. Luckily, Lush Cosmetics and the Ocean Legacy Foundation have taken matters into their own hands.
Lush has been consistently dedicated to lessening their environmental footprint since the beginning. With the help of Urban Resource Group (URG) and the Ocean Legacy Foundation they recently decided to take their efforts even further. After learning of shocking data that showed waste plastic would outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050, Lush realized they needed to use their resources to help. In an effective effort to stop oceans from becoming floating landfills, Lush, URG and the Ocean Legacy Foundation have begun to collect plastic from the ocean. Once they have collected, cleaned up and molded the plastic it is used to package shower gels, conditioner, shampoo and more!
More than 8 millions tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year. Unfortunately, until this particular project, it was never very economically efficient to recover the material. As a result, the ocean clean-up effort has mainly been thanks to donors, grants, and volunteers – the Ocean Legacy Foundation has been a huge part of the effort. This new partnership has allowed for the waste to have use post disposal. Hopefully, this inspires other companies to become creative in their environmental efforts. With over a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals dying, it is clear that help is desperately needed.
It’s fortunate for us humans that companies like these are taking the time to use their time, money and further resources to aid the ocean clean up. Seeing as without thriving oceans the world is basically done for. Lush began collecting plastic from the ocean and shore of Vancouver Island and has already converted, tested and successfully converted 27 tons of waste.
Lush and the Ocean Legacy Foundation, along with their community partners, will be working to up the effort so that they can collect more plastic and make more 100 per cent recyclable bottles and black pots for Lush to sell their products in. Lush has always strived to create as little waste as possible – you can bring 5 empty blacks pots to any store to receive a free face mask in return. It is efforts like these that give hope to saving our oceans and environment in a largely bleak world.
If you would like to donate and help make the oceans better for seabirds, marine mammals (and humans!) then head over to the Ocean Legacy Foundation and give what you can.
