GLOBALLY famous Poole brand Lush is introducing a bottle deposit scheme which gives cosmetics shoppers a 50 pence discount for recycling.

The retailer has launched Bring It Back – a packaging returns scheme enabling customers to bring back any full-sized Lush plastic packaging for recycling.

For each item returned, customers will receive 50p to spend that day.

The returned packaging will then be sent to the Greenhub, Lush’s UK recycling hub, where it is processed for sending to UK firms which remould it for Lush as black pots or use it as industry feedstock material.

Lush product inventor Rowena Bird, who co-founded the business in Poole in 1995, said: “We are the difference in the cosmetic industry. We have the ideas and the passion, it’s then about making those ideas a reality by getting everyone to join in.”

The Bring It Back scheme joins Lush’s existing fresh face mask scheme, which allows customers to bring back five items of Lush plastic packaging in exchange for a fresh mask.

Lush’s existing efforts see more than 500,000 pots come back to its Greenhub each year. The company also offers a Knot Swap scheme, which allows customers to return Lush knot wraps – its alternative to traditional gift wrap – for a 50 per cent off another one of the same size.

Lush said its latest initiative was driven by the fact that only nine to 20 per cent of the world’s plastics are recycled despite the work of domestic recycling programmes.

Rae Stanton-Smithson of Lush Earthcare said: “We are working hard to offer people the ultimate waste-free shopping experience. We continue to invent revolutionary naked products, unique packaging materials, work on reusable plastic packaging items as well as looking into refilling options for the future. This recycling scheme is another step on our path to leaving the world Lusher than we found it.

“By moving towards a deposit-style scheme, whereby Lush customers know that they are ‘renting’ the packaging and can simply return it when they are finished, we keep the responsibility of waste-reduction and resource recycling as a company responsibility. All we need our customers to do is simply return their empties to us – we’ll take care of the rest.”