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This article first appeared in our Health Revolution issue of My Green Pod Magazine, distributed with The Guardian on 24 July 2020. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
The refill service at Pure Lakes Skincare is one of the first of its kind in the UK – and it recently won the company a spot on the prestigious National Recycling Awards shortlist.
The booming demand for plastic-free products has led various companies to introduce refill pouches for certain products, or to offer internal recycling for packaging.
In contrast, Pure Lakes will actually refill any original bottle or jar – a fantastic service made possible by the fact that everything’s made by hand in its Lake District workshop.
The process is extremely straightforward: you simply order a refill option online, at a 30% discount. You then send your container back to the Pure Lakes workshop in the Lake District National Park, where it’s filled and returned to you in the post.
As well as offering a genuine refill service, Pure Lakes bottles its products in sugar rusk. The company is also authentically natural when it comes to what’s inside the packaging.
While some companies use plastic-free packaging for products that contain chemicals and synthetic polymers (liquid plastics), Pure Lakes sticks to plant ingredients of an extremely high quality.
These include rosehip seed oil, a natural alternative to retinol; hyaluronic acid, the beauty industry’s moisture hero and frankincense, a firm anti-ageing favourite.
The products also represent great value, with face cream starting at £13.
All Pure Lakes products are guaranteed; if something is not working you can send it back and it will be replaced with an alternative or refunded, with no questions asked.
This service is a blueprint for tackling single-use plastics without forcing a compromise on authentic and ethical natural beauty. We wish them all the very best at the awards.
Click here to find out more about the Pure Lakes refill service.
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