Our approach
Lush Digital believes technology should give more than it takes from society and the environment. Tech doesn’t have to be unethical; it can be built for the greater good and impact positive social change. We champion ethical hardware, ethical data, ethical design, and open source technologies and we support and elevate communities who feel the same.
Just as Lush ethically sources ingredients, Lush Digital believes in ethical tech that gives back to the community. Lush Digital aims to provide open source solutions where before only monopolies existed; it fights for supply chain transparency, digital innovation, and telling the Tech For Good stories that are as yet untold.
Our approach to tech is a feature-led approach, built on our headless platform. We use API and microservices to connect to our infrastructure, which is cloud-based. Where we can, we work with the open-source community, build in-house or connect with third parties who follow the same best practices.
ESC Big Tech
At Lush we can’t keep quiet about the things we care about. We’ve been campaigning for human rights for over 25 years, and we believe that digital rights are human rights. We will always stand up alongside grassroots groups calling for action and actively campaigning for reform.
We want to ensure that any space you find Lush in – be that on the high street or online – is an oasis of kindness. At the moment that’s not what you find on social media and Big Tech platforms.
A digital manifesto
Big Tech is becoming a pretty common phrase, but who or what is it? In simple terms, it’s used as an umbrella to reference the largest, most influential, most dominant, and most profitable tech companies. We conducted a report with The Future Laboratory to to investigate the digital landscape, today and in the future.
As an inventor of bath bombs, I pour all my efforts into creating products that help people switch off, relax and pay attention to their wellbeing. Social media platforms have become the antithesis of this aim, with algorithms designed to keep people scrolling and stop them from switching off and relaxing.
Lush goes Anti-Social
In 2021, Lush UK took the decision to turn our back on some social media platforms, due to increasing concerns over how much control these big platforms had over many people, and controlling which people saw anything we posted. The idea that our main route of communication with our customers is controlled by a third party was becoming worrying.
The Wholeness Fund
During lockdown we took part in Digital Detox Day alongside charity partner, I Am Whole, and influencer Zoe Sugg. I Am Whole and Zoe had lots of experience of the negative effects of social media and the challenges it can bring to the wellbeing and mental health of users, especially the young.
raised for The Wholeness Fund
The Digital Fund
The Digital Fund was created in 2016 to support grassroots activists and charities protecting freedom of expression in the digital era and fighting to keep the internet free, open and safe. Funds were raised via the sale of Error 404 bath bomb.
raised for the Digital Fund
A digital ethics history at Lush
Access Now #KeepItOn campaign
What The Zuck at TNW
Take CTRL & Bits of Freedom
Digital Detox Day
Anti-Social Media policy
SXSW digital divestment
ESC Big Tech campaign
Digital Products
Bath Bot
After five years in the making, we’ve launched our ‘digital bath bomb’ – Bath Bot – designed to transform bath time with an explosion of colour and 180-degree sound. Manufactured in the UK, Bath Bot is vegan and waterproof without the use of animal-derived glue
Lush Lens
Our innovative app allows us to save on both packaging and water, allowing customers to scan a product to discover ingredient information, and giving staff the ability to demo how a product works, digitally!
Commerce
Commerce is our Digital shopping application – either website or app, or future digital selling platform. It’s where we build the non assistant shopping experience, making sure our products are discoverable and giving the customer the best Digital experience.
Lush Pay
We have built our own till system, and Lush Pay powers both our in store and online payment gateways, working with Adyen, a global payment provider. We want to offer our customers all the payment options possible to make their check out experience as seamless as possible.
Business Tools
Lush owns the whole supply chain of our products, and that’s the same for the technology. Business Tools manages and develops both internal and external systems which are used by multiple businesses within Lush, able to connect the network of business needs, with one product served to many.
Digital Core
Without Digital Core, the other digital products wouldn’t exist. Digital Core houses the core infrastructure of our Digital business. By using as much of cloud infrastructure as possible, Digital Core ensures our Digital products are running efficiently and sustainably, and services our infrastructure networks.
We will either partner with companies who focus on microservice tools which can connect to our infrastructure via API or we will build that service in-house for a bespoke service to Lush.
It’s important to us to not have a black box system but a connected network where we can build out and connect to different systems. Using APIs that allow the capabilities of one computer program to be used by another and allow two different programs to communicate builds out our connected network of services.
We use Google Cloud servers because they use 100% renewable energy, and enable Lush to release to market quickly. This also strengthens our Data security as Hardware failures do not result in data loss because of networked backups.
Headless commerce is the separation of the front end and back end of our application, with the freedom of expression to build whatever and however we want. Most importantly, it enables Lush to enrich the customer experience.
scans using Lush Lens
I strongly believe Lush Lens has the potential to revolutionise the packaging industry, even eliminate it.
Find your career
We have our own in-house tech and digital team, based across the globe. Find your Lush career today.
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