One of the most annoying things about finding good skincare is sustainability. The search for good, environmentally-friendly, products can seem endless. Well, it is time to call it off: Pure Lakes has won a National Recycling Award, and rightly so. They have a revolutionary refill initiative which also gives customers 30% off the price when they return the packaging and reorder.
The products are natural and made in the beautiful Lake District. The packaging itself it biopolymer which is made with sugarcane. I have tried their products and they are fantastic and they smell amazing. I cannot recommend this brand enough. They are truly amazing.
“Why should loyal customers be out of pocket for doing the right thing…”
Natural skincare brand Pure Lakes has won a National Recycling Award for its revolutionary refill initiative. Their pioneering progress towards ‘closing the loop’ has been recognised in the Circular Economy category at the National Recycling Awards.
Owners Claire and Gareth McKeever ask customers to return their original, sugar-based biopolymer bottles to be refilled, rather than being sent refills in additional pouches as is available with many brands.
“Having researched the options,” Gareth said, “we realised that despite using less plastic than new bottles, pouches are not easily or widely recyclable. We have made Reduce, Reuse, Recycle a big part of our business but have gone two steps further and given the entire Refill process a Rethink.”
Pure Lakes Skincare are pioneering this new return and refill process and are the first brand to offer such a comprehensive service. Unlike other brands, the refills are available across the entire Pure Lakes range, with 30% off the cost price to help cover the return postage.
Gareth continued: “From a manufacturing business perspective it is not the most efficient process as all batches are handmade, perhaps one of the reasons other brands don’t offer it. However, we don’t want our loyal customers to be out of pocket for doing the right thing, they should be rewarded for refilling and reusing, and the more people that do it the easier it becomes for us to carry it out.”
Having consciously sourced all their packaging, a refill service that went one step further seemed like the obvious next step for Pure Lakes, which already has a strong reputation for being ethical and sustainable.
On receiving the empties, they are washed and refilled from small batches the team handmakes themselves in Staveley, adding a new date and batch number before returning them to the customer as good as new.
Since launching in 2006, the brand has been using 100% traceable, natural and biodegradable raw ingredients to make their products and all the formulas are free from synthetics, parabens and SLS.
This initiative is just one of many choices they’ve made towards carbon neutrality. They’re in the process of raising finance to build a new workshop which if successful will be powered by air source heat pumps and solar panels, where they’ll be able to grow their own ingredients.