Rowena Bird, one of the co-founders of Lush Global, a leading inventor, manufacturer and retailer of fresh handmade cosmetics, visited Lebanon for a week to increase awareness of LUSH's work in Lebanon, promote ethical beauty and gain strong partnerships with local NGO's and LUSH-funded projects.
"I am very pleased to have this great opportunity to visit this beautiful country. Lebanon has a unique landscape and diversified flora, which adds to its vibrant civil society organizations who are actively preserving the environment,"said Rowena Bird.
LUSH products are 100% vegetarian, 74% vegan, 65% self-preserving and 60% free of wasteful packaging, with absolutely no animal testing being done on LUSH products or ingredients.
Bird visited different projects funded by LUSH in Lebanon including the Butterfly Garden in West Bekaa by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon (SPNL), The Afeer project in Saydoun by Soils Lebanon, and the Olive Groves of Bioland, a leading organic food provider, in Batroun.
"At LUSH, our main mission is to support a number of causes related to the environmental conservation, human and animal rights," explained LinaTannir, of LUSH Lebanon. "We are committed to the community and dedicate an annual budget to support grassroots activists and organisations working in these areas."
Established in 1995 in the UK, LUSH has always been driven by innovation and its ethics. Creators of pioneering beauty products such as the fizzing bath bomb, shower jellies and solid shampoo bars, LUSH places emphasis on fresh ingredients like organic fruits and vegetables. LUSH fights tirelessly against animal testing and operates a thoroughly comprehensive Ethical Buying department, developing fair and direct trade initiatives.
"We are looking to move beyond the concept of "sustainable", which is essentially keeping things as they are, towards "regenerative". Many systems are already so degraded that keeping them as they are not enough. When we talk about working towards environmental and social regeneration, we mean creating systems that give back more than they take. The Sustainable LUSH (SLUSH) Fund was founded to build capacity for and to empower such initiatives," said Rowena.
The First LUSH Lebanon store was launched in 2012 in Beirut Souks and six months later another shop was introduced in ABC Mall in Dbayeh and in 2014 a third LUSH Lebanon store was opened in ABC Mall Achrafieh. In 2015, the LUSH Lebanon in ABC Dbayeh got a make-over and relocation to match the famous LUSH Oxford Street concept. The last LUSH shop in Lebanon to open is ABC Mall Verdun.
