Lush's CEO Mark Constantine is providing an eco solution to single-use plastic

Bombastic: Lush co-founder Mark Constantine at his flagship Oxford Circus store
Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

We now know single-use plastic is a bad thing, don’t we? Well, meet the man who knew 40 years ago.

Mark Constantine is the co-founder of Lush, the cosmetics store that you can smell on the high street without having to walk through the door. He’s the inventor of bath bombs and packaging-free shampoo and now, body lotion, which looks like an actual bottle on its side.

He’s a big man with a huge laugh and a weakness for swearing and, when we meet, is wearing a red patterned shirt which is anything but corporate. He arrived at Lush’s Soho offices from Oxford Street, bringing with him a nice girl from the shop floor there to put him right about what customers want.

That’s how he operates; he’s impulsive, but it’s impulsiveness based on a shrewd sense of what works in business, and in the Lush business, it’s enthusiastic employees who make the difference.

“This week”, Mark observes cheerfully, “National Geographic Magazine has a feature on our shampoo bars [solid shampoos] which we invented in 1987. ‘The Bar that broke with plastic’. Thank God for that … 40 years late. But it’s fine!”

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For him it is simple: single-use plastics are bad, so get rid of them.

“With one product I looked at for a documentary”, he said, “it turned out two thirds of the cost was packaging. You’ve got to get rid of that. And we all want to get rid of plastic. What we’re spending on packaging we could be spending on the product.”

It’s that simple for him. It was Lush that managed to extract the water from things such as hair conditioner and body cream and replace it with other natural ingredients to make a solid product that wouldn’t need a bottle. The packaging-free range is called Naked — a genius label.

“I was just doing it to prove a point,” he says. “Did I expect it to be so successful? No. Am I going to do something more about it? Yes.”

He has opened a branch of Lush in Milan which is entirely packaging free. He’s planning another in Berlin.

“Is this the new Lush?” he asks. “Dunno” (he’s forever asking himself rhetorical questions). “Looks like it. It’s way beyond where I am right now.” It’s that open-mindedness, that capacity to go with the flow, which makes him and the company so interesting. But what about those people who like to show off their cosmetics bottles? “I just don’t care,” he says cheerfully.

He is a radical capitalist, and likes Jeremy Corbyn. “I prefer John McDonnell though,” he says.

That’s not to say he lets employees dictate policy. He’s surrounded by vegan employees. Are they complete fascists? I ask. “Yes!” he says.

“Apparently they live 10 years longer; I tell them it’s a punishment for their awful diet.”

Undeniably, he’s a complex man. He talks about something called the “entrepreneur’s wound” — the idea they’re compensating for something in their background.

His father left home when he was two; he was brought up by his mother — who later rejected him — his grandmother and his aunt. His aunt killed herself; his grandmother, who had a grocer’s shop, died when he was young, and he says he’s partly driven by the thought of making her proud. Mind you, when it came to working out a policy for employees who are parents, where Lush is progressive, he had to acknowledge: “I don’t do work-life balance”.

He’s a former church choirboy and he is uxorious. He met his wife, Mo, at 17 and she’s a co-founder of Lush. Unlike many successful men, he’s monogamous. “I know it’s not fashionable”, he says, “but it’s a matter of self-respect, and respect for Mo”.

So what’s next? A hair removal wax shaped like a toffee apple, with a stick that doubles as a spatula, that’s what. Melt and apply.

“It’s a very elegant solution”, he says happily.

  • Dear John: The Road to Pelindaba by Jeff Osment is published by Lush, £14.95, uk.lush.com

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