Bubblegum Lip Scrub - Lush

As I have chosen 'about the product' as my theme for my website I think it is important to understand the brand and product before using it. Lush is known for their natural products, often featuring organic ingredients. When looking at the website I noticed it states 'we do not test our finished products on animals. We also only purchase from ingredient suppliers who do not test on animals.' These are all qualities that ultimately make a product more desirable.

Lush bubble gum scrub is a vibrant exfoliant for you lips. Application and use is simple with a great final out come 

"Prep your lips with a buff and polish at the start of your make-up routine to ensure your lipstick glides on and stays put. Just apply with a clean finger, and let the exfoliating caster sugar and softening jojoba oil scrub away dead skin and infuse moisture to  rejuvenate your smile." - lush 

Sounds pretty fancy so far. So what makes up this pot of handmade, luminous pink, candy floss flavoured, organic lushness? excuse the awful pun. Turns out it's simply six ingredients. Caster sugar, Organic Jojoba oil, Alpha Isomethyl Ionone, Flavour, Colour 45410, Colour 45380. now the first two ingredients from this list are described as natural ingredients and the second half safe synthetics. but what are safe synthetics? 

Safe synthetics are not as black and white as you think. yes a lot of cosmetics include toxins even lush's but as you may have noticed a lot of things in life include toxins. The difference is cosmetics don't have to put a warning sign on like you would have to with any aerosol can or you know most things. By noticing things like this you can be referred to as chemical phobic, unable to believe something is safe just because they say it is. On the contrary I think it is healthy to question what is written on the products we use, why not the average woman applies foundation everyday. Within the beauty industry words like natural and organic are thrown around a lot and we just believe it but in reality very few products actually are, this is just packaging. So if you can't prove if anything is really natural and organic then it just might be a good idea to find out which has less toxins/ chemicals. Or even which chemicals are safer to use. On the other hand you have 'product proud people' who know that REACH (the organisation who regulate cosmetics) have a standard of safety and that the quality of the product is more important than how many chemicals are in there. On this side of the argument it is also known that organic and natural products find it difficult to produce matt and high pigmented products which as a make-up artist will affect your purchases. However no matter if your chemical phobic or product proud all consumer product manufacturers do have to pass a certain guidelines that say they are safe.

After questioning and researching wether or not Lush's products are quite as organic and animal friendly as they say it turns out they really are putting in their best efforts but to create an effective product it can't be 100% organic as it simply won't do its job swell. I do think that as a product they have considered both the quality of the product and the quality of the ingredients and come to a fair middle ground. So to my next question, is 25g of this stuff worth £5.50, when you can get a bag of sugar and a jar of coconut oil for under £10 and make at least a kilogram of an equivalent product. This is of course is only one woman's opinion and making it this way will not leave your lips tasting of candy floss but instead coconuts. I am going to use this product to shoot with as the texture and vibrance of it is perfect for my idea.