Sticky Dates

There are many different syrups: ones you drink, ones you glaze on your pancakes, ones you pour in your batter. At Lush, we love them all.

What is common to every kind of syrup? A very high sugar content. Dates, maple, agave, sugarcane, corn… all these plants contain natural sugars. Their fruits, sap, kernels, or fibres are processed, generally by simple boiling and filtering, in order to concentrate these sugars until a dense and velvety liquid is obtained. Another way to make syrup is to mix pure sugar with water and infuse the sweet liquid with fragrant flowers, leaves or bark. However, most of the time, it’s done with artificial flavours and colourants.

Their high sugar content gives syrups humectant properties, meaning that they attract moisture from their surroundings and bring it to the skin and hair.

They contribute to the sweet, tantalising and gourmand aura of some of our products, sometimes even adding to their scent and texture.

They can give a delicious taste to oral and mouth care products.

We purchase a lot of different syrups, in small or large quantities, so the country of origin will depend on the product, stocks, and the Lush manufacturing site where your product was made. For more information on each syrup, search for them in our ingredient hub or have a look at this selection:

Organic Date Syrup

Organic Agave Syrup

Maple Syrup

Rice Syrup

You’ll find date syrup as the sweet base of all our gourmand Sticky Dates products and much more in our skincare and haircare ranges.

Such a sweet biodegradable, natural exfoliator!

The name 'sugar' can be applied to any carbohydrate that has a sweet taste. In Lush's ingredient lists, it describes the sucrose obtained from sugar cane or sugar beets - the classic crystalline sugar you can find in most kitchens. It can be coarse, fine, white or coloured. We use this diversity to create innovative products that vary visually and have different effects or sensations on the skin.

It is a gentle scrub that removes dead cells to brighten, smooth and prepare the skin for other treats. (It’s particularly effective and yummy on the lips!)

It is a natural humectant, so it helps maintain moisture in the skin and hair. 

The human skin renews itself regularly, in cycles of 5 to 6 weeks on average (although this changes with age). New cells are created in the deepest layers of the epidermis and work their way to the skin's surface. Even though they usually flake away on their own, they sometimes stick around for too long, clogging the pores and giving a dull and tired appearance. This is when an exfoliant comes in handy. Coarse materials like sugar buff and cleanse the skin perfectly.

To find out more about each of our sugar 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!

If you were about to exfoliate your lips (to make them extra smooth), wouldn't you be tempted to use sugar? Well, great minds think alike - our Lip Scrubs got your back. Or lips.

Benzoin has been used in incense and perfumes for centuries. Its sweet, spicy and slightly earthy aroma brings comfort and calm to the mind.

Benzoin is a natural resin that can be collected from two types of styrax trees: Styrax benzoin, native to Sumatra, and Styrax tonkinensis, which grows in Southeast Asia. 

Resin is a natural bandage for trees. It drips from wounded trunks and hardens in the open air, protecting the wounds from possible disease, fungus, and insect attack. Resin is full of potent aromatic compounds, which probably inspired humans to try and make something out of it centuries ago. Some trees produce a lot of it, making it easy to harvest. Once hard, the resin can be burned pure, ground into powder, or refined with solvents to produce a fragrant extract called resinoid.

Its sweet, balsamic and powdery scent is a delightful sensory treat.

It soothes the skin and keeps it healthy and firm.

Its thick consistency creates a thin protective and conditioning film on the skin and hair, which helps prevent moisture loss and gives hair shine.

As a fixative, it helps other fragrance ingredients to blend well and last longer on the skin.

Lush purchases a tincture of benzoin from a UK-based company and a resinoid from a supplier in Laos. The latter works with 80 farmers who collect resin from Styrax tonkinensis trees, using traditional methods and focusing on quality. The trees are grown and harvested sustainably, and the forest is managed according to agroforestry principles. Farmers receive fair payments and labour security and safety. 

Find out more about each of our benzoin ingredients on their dedicated pages:

Benzoin Resinoid

Tincture of Benzoin

Benzoin Gum Powder

Or browse through two collections of iconic Lush scents: The sleepy range, which combines sweet benzoin and tonka with calming lavender, and our gourmand selection of irresistible fragrances.

Sticky, warm, and mouth-watering, carob lends a deliciously sweet aroma to our products, making it a gourmand-lover's delight. 

Whether it's used to give our lip scrubs a cake-like flavour or to add a nostalgically comforting aroma to our fragrances, shower gels, and beyond, carob should come with a disclaimer that you will smell so delicious you'll leave everyone craving a freshly-baked treat. 

Sweet, cakey fragrance, with notes of vanilla and dark chocolate

Naturally sweet taste

Antioxidant rich for skin support

A hardy evergreen plant that thrives in harsh, arid conditions, carob trees are native to the Mediterranean, especially Morocco. The trees produce hanging seed pods that turn from bright green to dark brown as they ripen. Pods contain up to 15 seeds and are usually wild-harvested.

Once shelled, the bean-like seeds inside each ripened pod can be ground into a powder and made into a gum also known as locust bean gum - a natural and vegan-friendly thickener and stabiliser. A by-product of carob gum production, empty carob pods have long been considered waste, however the pods have other uses that improve circularity of the ingredient. Roasted and ground into a powder, they can be used as a substitute for cocoa powder, or transformed via solvent extraction into a resinoid. Resinoids are popular perfumery ingredients, thanks to their sweet, spicy fragrance - one of reasons we love using carob in our products! 

Across the ancient Mediterranean, carob seeds were used as a countermeasure when weighing precious stones and gold. In the Bible, it was thought to sustain St John the Baptist during his hermitic time in the desert, giving the tree its pseudonym St John's Bread - a name echoed across several European languages. In Islam, carob juice retains cultural significance as a traditional drink served during Ramadan. A fitting nod to the origins of our bestselling carob queen Sticky Dates, which began as part of our seasonal Eid range. 

Head over to our page on carob resinoid to learn more about where we source this sweet treat.

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.