As a business making physical products, our environmental footprint is still unavoidable—from materials and energy to carbon emissions and waste. What we can do is keep our footprint in check, align with natural cycles through circular economy and regenerative principles, and challenge ourselves to use less while staying within planetary boundaries.

Our Carbon Footprint: Total emissions 199,247 tCO2e in FY24 (vs 195,105 tCO2e in FY22) — roughly equivalent to Mount Etna erupting for 100 days straight. Every year we include more areas of the business footprint into our reporting, FY24 numbers include all our purchases and supply chain,  manufacturing, buildings, employee travel, freight, waste management, and even the energy customers use to heat water for our products. 

The supply web dominates at 38% (our biggest opportunity for impact), followed by customer use (31%) and freight (10%). Our indirect emissions (Scope 3) account for 93.8% of our footprint — areas where our control is limited but influence can be significant. Our direct operations (Scope 1&2), where we have most control, represent just 8% of total emissions. 

Moving to renewable energy, reducing our use of fossil fuels,  improving farming, using recycled materials, reducing product waste are all things important for reducing our footprint. One of those key targets is our 80:20 air-to-ocean/road freight target, changing how we move materials is crucial for emissions reduction. We have moved to 100% renewable electricity, and since 2021 have a team dedicated to reducing the impact of the supply chain. 

Our Water Footprint: 208,081m³ total water use tracked globally in FY24—equivalent to over 2 million baths. Manufacturing accounts for one-third, retail two-thirds. Median retail water use intensity: 1.4m³/m² annually, which we’re working to reduce through engaging with stores with higher water footprints and operational improvements. Only 35% of shops have actual water meters (the rest rely on landlord estimates), so we’re investigating meter installation in water-stressed areas like LA, UAE, Spain, and Italy.
Our supply chain faces increasing water risks — we lost our entire Bulgarian chamomile crop to drought in 2021, while flooding disrupted Indian Davana oil and Croatian grains. Smart stewardship means balancing customer experience with conservation: only 4% of bath sales occur in high water-stress regions, and shower products outsell bath products in water-stressed countries.

We’re investing in water treatment at manufacturing sites—Japan upgraded to enzyme-enhanced purification, Toronto uses physical-chemical separation, and the UK is installing a second dissolved air flotation system. 

Rainwater capture at Glasgow spa and waterless demos through Lush Lens show how technology supports water efficiency without compromising customer experience.

Our Materials Footprint: We buy and use many different types of materials in our business, from raw materials and packaging to computers, phones and furniture for our shops. Getting consolidated global figures on the latter is pretty tricky, but we can report on the former. 

When it comes to packaging, we purchased an estimated 6,085 tonnes of packaging globally in FY24, and just under 10,000 tonnes of C02e (13% of supply chain emissions or 5% of total emissions). It includes gifts, product packaging, retail sundries (bags, shampoo bar tin, greaseproof paper etc.), most of transit packaging (exc. things like pallet wrap due to lack of data), and some of the major packaging used around manufacturing (gloves, kitchen rolls, etc.).

Paper/card dominates at 54.1% by weight (3,270.7 tonnes) but with relatively low carbon intensity. Plastic represents 18.3% by weight (1,107.8 tonnes) but 30.4% of emissions, while wood accounts for 17.4% by weight (1,053.6 tonnes) with the lowest carbon footprint (2.9% of emissions). The majority of paper and card used in the business comes from recycled sources and is easily recyclable almost everywhere in the world. 

Transit packaging dominates by function (46.8% by weight), followed by product packaging (15.5%) and gift packaging (14.5%). However, manufacturing consumables punch above their weight—just 2.6% of materials but 10.5% of emissions due to high carbon intensity of materials like disposable gloves. Over the years we have moved to more internal re-usable packaging in our manufacturing sites and increasing those efforts is an effective way of reducing our materials footprint. 

Our Waste Footprint: Finally, a part of the materials we buy end up as waste. To align to natural cycles, any materials we no longer use should be repurposed, recycled or composted so they can keep generating value. In FY24 we estimate that we generated 7,464 tonnes of total waste globally, improving to 63% diversion rate globally in FY24. This is an increase on the 6,226 tonnes generated in FY22, mainly due to increase in production and sales. 

Manufacturing globally has a 71% diversion rate. Germany manufacturing had the highest diversion rate in the Lush manufacturing world at 88%, closely followed by North America manufacturing at 82%. 

Retail sits at 54% on average, with many shops around the world without access to adequate facilities for recycling materials – in North America we have been working with shopping malls to improve access. Wet paper towels are the single biggest source of non-recyclable waste for our shops! We ask our shops to ‘weigh the waste’ once a year so we can collect the data and they can get more familiar with what goes on in their waste. 

When it comes to product waste, if the product is still usable we make every effort to donate it. We donate straight from the store or from our manufacturing centres to various charities. If it’s not possible to donate the product then we send these to composting where we can. 

In the UK, we invested in our own recycling centre, the Green Hub. It processes the Bring it Back returns from the stores and our UK manufacturing wastes. Green Hub: 81% of solid waste recycled, recovered, or composted. You can read the full report here.

The GREEN HUB in its new home opened two years ago with a mission to help Lush, customers and the wider community to reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink.

Collaboration is the not-so-secret sauce of the circular economy. This report could not exist without customers bringing their packaging back, shops sorting them correctly, manufacturing colleagues segregating their waste and finding ways to re-use materials, visitors interested in learning more, the team at the Hub finding homes to repurpose everything from furniture to products, and ensuring materials are recycled to their highest value.

81% of solid waste was recycled, recovered, composted or reconditioned- 9249 tonnes!