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Let castor oil put a nice soothing spell on your skin and scalp!

The evergreen castor bean shrub (Ricinus communis) is considered native to eastern Africa. Castor oil is produced by cold-pressing the seeds and goes through a clarification process by heating before use. The oil is a colourless, odourless and tasteless pale yellow liquid. 

Castor oil is both antibacterial and soothing.

It takes care of the scalp so well that it allows hair follicles to develop strong and healthy hair.

It has been used medicinally around the world for thousands of years, mostly to treat skin conditions such as eczema or psoriasis, as well as burns or acne.

It can be mixed with sodium hydroxide along with other vegetable oils to create a thick and stable soap base.

‘Castor’ means beaver in French!

To find out more about our suppliers, browse your Lush product’s list of ingredients and click on castor oil. This should take you to a page full of details!

It’s good to be green. Limes have a sharp, zesty scent and bring the shine!

The key lime grows on the Citrus aurantifolia tree, mainly cultivated in Brazil and Mexico these days although it is native to Southeast Asia. Fruits are usually picked when green and unripe, making them richer in acid and sugar than lemons. 

Limes (and their oil) contain citric acid, an alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) that provides gentle exfoliation and thus cleanses the skin of dead skin cells, leaving it radiant and smooth. 

Their acidity gives a lot of shine to the hair as it flattens their cuticles and so reflects light better.

It is a top note in perfume blends, meaning it’s the first one your nose will pick, but it’s also the first to evaporate on the skin.

Lush purchases lime oil from a producer in Mexico. The whole fruit, peel included, is pressed to obtain a juice-and-oil emulsion that is then steam distilled to recover the aromatic oil. We also use fresh and dried limes in our products, which can come from different places. To find out more about them, browse your Lush product’s list of ingredients and click on the ones you are interested in. This should take you to a page full of details!

We’re so used to pepper that we tend to forget how precious, fragrant and versatile it is.

Piper nigrum, the black pepper plant, is a vine native to southern India that can grow up to 20 meters long (65 feet). Its very small, berry-like fruits grow in clusters and change in colour, taste, and scent as they ripen. Typically, black pepper is obtained from young green fruits which are picked and dried in the heat until they turn black and develop their pungent pepper smell. But you can also get white, green and red pepper from these fruits, each with a different intensity - so many flavourful choices with just one plant.

If this already amazes you, then rejoice, because there are so many plants in the world called pepper... enough to be overwhelmed! In Lush products alone, we use or have used pink pepper (Shinus molle), Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum Alatum), Sansho pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum) and Jamaican pepper, also known as allspice.

Although each pepper has its own specificity, their main common trait (when it comes to cosmetics) is their scent. Not that they all smell the same! But their oil, powder or infusion release strong and complex fragrances that can perfume the skin and hair.

As for black pepper, which we love so much at Lush, it is said to help relieve tension and aches while stimulating blood circulation when applied to the skin and scalp.

Well, kind of! Black pepper is listed as one of the Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History (Bill Laws, 2010). Indeed, it was one of the stars of the spice trade. This trade began near 1000 BCE, bringing fragrant plants from all over the world, by land and sea, to the most enthusiastic European noses and palates. Black pepper was so popular and profitable that it encouraged explorers like Christopher Columbus to find easier and faster routes to India (where pepper was produced). And we all know how that ended!

Many peppers mean many sources! To learn more about our suppliers, browse your Lush product’s list of ingredients and click on the ones you are interested in. This should take you to a page full of details.

You can find the warm scent of black pepper gorgeously paired up with patchouli and vanilla in our Lord of Misrule range.

Waxes give cosmetic products a pleasant texture and feel while protecting the skin and hair.

Initially, wax is a substance that resembles beeswax. It’s usually a thick and oily substance, sometimes solid at room temperature, sometimes spreadable. There are many types of waxes, which can be of animal, mineral or plant origin. Here, we’ll focus on the many vegetable waxes that Lush uses, such as rapeseed, rose, sunflower or candelilla wax, to name a few. 

The processes for obtaining vegetable wax are quite different depending on the plant's species and the desired texture and properties. Here are some examples:

Acids - Candelilla wax is infamous for being extracted from a succulent plant with sulfuric acid, a very dangerous material. Luckily, Lush creative buyers have found a supplier that has pioneered a new technique with the less harmful citric acid.

Hydrogenation - This process is frequently used in the vegetable oil industry, improving textures and shelf life. The transformation can range from the slight thickening of an oil, to its solidification into a wax. Soy wax is a good example of this.

Solvents - Take rose absolute. Like all absolutes, it is produced by soaking the raw material (rose petals) in a solvent such as ethanol. This results in a waxy paste called concrete which is ‘washed’ again with solvents to separate the wax from the fragrant rose oil. The oil is called absolute and is sold separately. The remaining wax has a faint scent and retains some of the plant’s properties, which is ideal for cosmetic use.

Benefits will depend on the type of wax but, as a general rule, they give our products a nice texture and shine. They sit lightly on the skin and hair to protect them, giving lustre and softness. Some waxes will be very fine to the touch and hardly felt, others will provide a strong conditioning sensation.

Each wax has its very own story! To find out more, browse your Lush product’s list of ingredients and click on the ones you are interested in. This should take you to a page full of details.

Your order will be expertly protected against impact during transit by biodegradable Eco-Pops, compostable packaging nuggets made from potato starch! They're easily dissolvable in water or soil.

Fresh cosmetic ingredients are more effective on skin, hair, and mind than heavily preserved beauty products. 65% of our raw material spend is on natural ingredients.