Cruelty-Free Giant Lush Opens Vegan Pop-Up Coffee Shop

Cruelty-free giant Lush will open a vegan coffee shop in London in a bid to highlight plastic waste.

The store, #carrythecup, will be launched in collaboration with Change Please – a social enterprise staffed by the homeless. Located at the Lush Soho Studio on Beak Street, it will open from August 14 for four weeks.

Free coffee, iced coffee or tea will be offered to anyone that comes in with a reusable cup. In addition, the #carrythecup coffee shop walls will ‘host an array of educational facts and positive actions people can take away and incorporate into their lives to make an impact and reduce waste’.

Reducing plastic

In a release sent to Plant Based News, Lush Soho Studio Manager, Michael O’Brien, said: “Reducing our reliance on plastic has been at the forefront of Lush’s innovations for the last 23 years.

“Beyond cosmetics, there are habits we can break and simple changes we can make to reduce or remove single-use plastic from our lives. By transforming our front exhibition space into a friendly coffee shop, we want to invite London locals and visitors inside for a free cup of coffee (or tea) and an informative discussion on how to ditch the single-use coffee cup, and learn to #carrythecup.

“The only catch to the free coffee? You have to bring your own cup (don’t worry, there will be exclusive reusable cups to buy* if you don’t have one already).”

Public awareness

Change Please Founder, Cemal Ezel, added: “We are so proud to be working with Lush to help promote the use of re-usable cups. Although the cups used by Change Please coffee are 100 percent compostable and Biodegradable in 12 weeks, this does not go far enough to address the problem of single-use disposables.

“We really feel there should be more public awareness of the ease of using a re-usable cup and this promotion by Lush is a bold statement of the need to make a sustainable difference, now!”

*Visitors to the shop will also be able to purchase one of 500 limited edition Lush reusable coffee cups (£12.00 each), which are made from six used cups.