Digital Ethics

Our Digital Ethics

Lush believes technology should give more than it takes from society and the environment. We champion ethical hardware, ethical data, ethical design, and open source technologies and support and elevate communities who feel the same. Just as Lush believes in ethically sourced ingredients, our Digital business 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, that aims to give more than it takes, act transparently, push innovation and raise industry standards. To keep us accountable to the beliefs that we hold true as a technological business, Lush Digital formulated its own set of Digital Ethics Policies to consider every time we design, build or launch a digital product. These policies represent a platinum standard that we aim to move iteratively closer too in each decision that we make. They are our guiding principles and can be consolidated into three categories: Open Source, Ethical Hardware and Ethical Data.

Open Source

Lush has always favoured communities and farmers when it comes to sourcing the ingredients for our products, which is why, in the technology world, we prioritise open source. This is a principle that means the code is written by a community and is publicly available for anyone to view, edit or change at no-cost. It encourages collaboration, transparency and innovation which is a huge deviation away from the world of big-tech selling software, ideas and services at sometimes huge costs with ethical pitfalls. At Lush, we aim to equally contribute back to these open-source tech communities, wherever we can, in order to support the grassroots world of creating tech for everyone to share and benefit from without the heavy burden of cost. When we code or develop a digital product that we believe could be valuable to other members of the open source community, we will contribute the code for others to build upon. We may not choose to contribute every element of a build (the differentiating factors that make our product unique), but we will contribute enough to make it of value to other developers. The open source policy is about embracing the use of these technologies in everything that we design, build and release throughout the Lush technology estate. We are committed to the principles of open source and in that spirit, we strive to use technologies with OSI-approved licenses and to contribute our research and code back to open communities under such licenses.

In 2024, Lush relaunched its website and app in collaboration with Saleor, utilising open source solutions to scale our global commerce operations while strengthening and showcasing our commitment to digital ethics. Saleor depends on countless contributions from different open-source developers, ranging from high-level libraries to machine coding. The platform is ushering in a new era of dedicated, developer-first commerce and this strong commitment to open source plays a central part. Our goal for our online shopping was to centralise our global commerce operations, instead of having to run different websites for our different markets. We also needed something that would be able to handle the fast paced nature of our business. This led us to microservices and we began by building our own e-commerce platform, eventually partnering with Saleor as a third party platform that could support purpose-built multichannel architectures. Working with Saleor allowed us modularity, flexibility, extensibility and scalability without the multi-market complexity we had been fighting against. It opened up an opportunity to move away from large scale enterprise solutions and give us the freedom to focus on creating and supporting the oasis of kindness we wanted to be online.

Ethical Hardware

We’ve always cared deeply about what we put into our cosmetics, so it feels natural to also care about what ‘ingredients’ go into the tech hardware that we buy, whether that’s a laptop, phone, TV or the tills we put in our shops. We aim to use what we deem to be the most ethical hardware. This might mean looking at the supply networks of the metals and components used, the way it’s been manufactured and its repairability and recyclability so we’re not contributing further to well known global problems with electronic waste. 

Electronic waste is one of the fastest growing streams in the world. In 2019, nearly 53.6 million tons of e-waste was generated globally, harming communities, impacting ecosystems and generating over £45 billion in wasted revenue. Many of the components and minerals that are used to produce electronic devices and white goods are mined from the earth through a series of unsafe and harmful processes for both humans and the environment. In addition to this the majority of an electronic device’s carbon footprint comes from its manufacturing. If we can reduce, reuse and recycle existing devices, this will dramatically decrease our electronic carbon footprint as an organisation.

Hardware also requires energy to run, so we’ll always favour solutions that use the least or most efficient amount of energy, or equally where no energy at all is required. E-Ink for example has been used to create multi-lingual signage in our Perfume Library in Florence and has also been used in other experiments in our Innovation Lab. Our ethical hardware policy has been established in consideration of these issues. It guides us to choose the best supplier we can in terms of their approach to sourcing materials, reparability, energy consumption and production methods used.

Ethical Hardware is something we had to consider when creating the Bath Bot. After 5 years of innovating and designing around the concept of a ‘digital bath bomb’, we launched the Bath Bot, made to transform bath time with an explosion of colour and 180-degree sound. This piece of technology was designed, engineered and is manufactured in the UK. We specifically designed it to be built without the need for glue, making the piece 100% vegan. It is also repairable and recyclable, which cuts down on electronic waste — and does not track your data use.

Along this same line of thinking, we also wish to dream up creative ways that technology can help solve other problems. Enter Lush Lens, our innovative app with a Lens feature that allows customers to scan a naked (packaging free) product to discover ingredient information and see how the product works. The Lens feature was designed in-house, by our very own R&D tech team, Tech Warriors, using open-source machine learning technology. Users can scan products they’re interested in to access and browse product information whilst in store, at home and even via the storefront window. Using the Lens technology to demonstrate products and product information is a step towards minimising packaging and reducing water wastage by showcasing products in use through videos. Lush’s entire naked range is detectable by the Lens feature and the updated app has increased the accuracy rate of detecting the right product to 98%.

Ethical Data

As a business, we store huge amounts of data. That data could be numbers, images or customers, staff and suppliers personal information. Whatever it is, we treat that data very carefully and we are transparent about what we hold, why we hold it and always give the owner of the data the right to fully remove it. The security around this data must also meet the highest standards to ensure we’re least at risk from data being compromised or used in a way we would be deemed unethical. It goes without saying that, unlike other businesses, we do not ever sell our users data for profit.

It is our belief that Data Privacy is a fundamental human right. The ethical data policy is about ensuring that all of Lush’s staff and customer data is secure and transparent as our customers and staff have the right to know what we hold about them. It states that we will ensure all data that is stored on our products or systems is encrypted and secure, we will ensure your data can be accessed by you only and those you give permission to and that we are transparent about how we use customer and staff data.

Social Switch Up

Generally, when we speak about social media, we’re referring to online platforms that allow the sharing of ideas and information, spaces to build communities and create virtual networks. They’re online ecosystems of like-minded people and there’s nothing wrong with this. Like our shops, we believe in creating safe environments for our customers to interact and engage with Lush, which is why in November 2021, we removed ourselves from Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok, and launched our Anti-Social Media Policy, as these are platforms we believe are unsafe for our customers. They have become places that prioritise profits over users safety and the spread of misinformation. This move was prompted by the release of the Facebook Files by Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen. According to the report, 13.5% of young girls who used Instagram in the UK had an increased rate of suicidal thoughts. The algorithms were also reportedly responsible for the spread of misinformation and violence in developing countries. Worst of all, the report stated that Meta knew how to address these issues and chose not to. Our own Digital Engagement Report, that we partnered with The Future Laboratory on, found that nearly half (49%) of the 12,000 participants believe social media platforms don’t do enough to protect users from harm, while the majority in the UK (63%) and Japan (53%) don’t think they do enough to moderate extreme viewpoints. What’s more, 65% don’t want their data used for commercial benefit and 75% went as far as to say that brands should leave platforms that are unethical.

We will still continue to campaign for safer social platforms and continue to put pressure on them and governments to make meaningful changes to make these online spaces less harmful. Our social media stance has been reported on by press and commentators and we are finding ourselves re-discussing our policy in 2025 in light of the spread of misinformation and hate speech on platforms like ‘X’ which leads to real-world violence. This has reinforced our belief that certain social media platforms are not designed to serve people, protect users, or safeguard truth. They are instead built to make the Big Tech ‘broligarchs’ richer and further their own agendas to maximise clicks, likes and shares. 

Coming off of these platforms also presents an opportunity to create more authentic connections by working directly with partners, charities, content creators and other talent. These partnerships are built on fair compensation and a shared belief in the power of genuine word-of-mouth marketing about products and campaigns we all feel passionately about. The landscape of word-of-mouth promotion has evolved significantly over the years — it’s no longer just friends, family or colleagues recommending products in everyday conversation. As consumers, we actively seek word of mouth recommendations and reviews from those we trust in the digital space too. We are committed to actively exploring and supporting new social technologies that are building a fairer, safer, and more transparent digital world. We see these as essential steps towards shaping more ethical, community-driven online spaces.

Big-Tech Rebellion

In March 2023, we announced a drive to divest away from the ‘big-tech’ players (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft). We see these players as owned by a handful of billionaires with unwieldy amounts of control over peoples health, businesses, and control of their newsfeeds. Similar to our open source policy, we’re taking back control by favouring the grassroots and communities over large corporations who only hoard profit. On Black Friday in 2023, we partnered with the People Vs Big Tech movement to launch our ESC Big Tech Campaign which encouraged people to sign The People’s Declaration, calling on legislators to put a stop to the power and abuses of Big Tech, end the destructive business models which turn data into weapons and defend people’s fundamental rights. The declaration asks for global legislations and regulations on Big Tech platforms to de-risk their design and detox their algorithms, end predatory and additive design features and put users back in control. We also believe digital services cannot be conditional on the acceptance of surveillance and profiling and there must be an end to surveillance advertising. Lastly, we need to bring in stronger powers for regulators to hold Big Tech accountable, including robust auditing.

In FY2023 we were spending £8.4 million on Big Tech platforms. Of this total amount, 68% of it was spent on the platform itself, and 32% was spent on Google advertising. We reduced this amount to £4 million in FY2024 and will further reduce to £3.6 million in FY2025, representing a 57% decrease in Big Tech spending. This divestment opened up more opportunity to invest in our tech R&D teams and projects. We invested £1 million in our R&D efforts in Tech Warriors and a further £1.5m in new digital projects in FY2025.