industry focus
Lush hoping to make government blush over refugee policy
Ethical beauty brand Lush used last week’s platform of national Refugee Week to shame the UK government over its unwelcoming strategy towards refugees fleeing persecution.
The bath bomb beauty business teamed up with Refugee Action on a new campaign where the windows of its 103 UK stores featured a lightbox message that read, “Wherever you’re from, however you got here, all refugees are welcome”.
The retailer said it had made the high-profile move to counter what it describes as the government’s "racist anti-refugee language and legislation".
The word “Welcome” also appeared on the windows in Albanian, Arabic, Dari & Farsi, Kurdish, Spanish, Tigrinya, Pashto, Ukrainian and Burmese to represent languages from the countries where most refugees currently arriving in the UK are from as part of the campaign that ran until 28th June.
The retailer also offered customers the chance to buy a bath bomb in Refugee Action’s trademark green and blue with “Welcome” embossed on the outside, and a piece of paper inside with a QR code that takes people to the campaign page on Refugee Action’s website.
All of the money from sales of the bath bombs (minus VAT) will be donated to the charity.
Andrew Butler, Lush campaigns manager, said: “We believe that all people should enjoy freedom of movement across the world, and with this campaign we’re working with Refugee Action to build compassion and empathy for refugees and people seeking asylum."
