Lush: Fair Trade Foot Lotion

Lush Cosmetics, a naturally based company believes that fresh are more effective. They have many vegan options and their products are hand made in small batches. One of their products, the Fair Trade Peppermint Foot Lotion not only cools and hydrates, but helps small producing farms with Fair Trade. The most popular kind of foot lotion seems to be peppermint scented lotions. Your feet take on a big job during the day; swelling and aches and pains are part of the deal. But peppermint lotions help dramatically by giving your feet a much needed cooling sensation. The peppermint induced cooling sensation almost instantly relieves the achy feeling while arnica, another popular ingredient in foot lotions, helps reduce swelling. If you're looking for a deeper moisturizing, Lush instructs you to either wear with cotton socks before bed or to wrap your feet in plastic wrap for an hour. And just because this says foot lotion doesn't mean you can't apply it to other parts of your body.

A great part about shopping on Lush's website is being able to review the products you buy as well as read reviews from other shoppers. And we're not talking about one or two reviews; this lotion has 87 reviews giving it a 4.5 out of 5 stars. While a few reviewers thought that the product wasn't quite as thick as they hoped, most people couldn't get enough of this lotion. That seems to be the case with many of Lush's products. Many of the products on their site have hundreds of reviews. And with a very active forum, you feel like you know exactly what you're getting before it arrives.

If you are unfamiliar with fair trade, let me tell you quickly what it means. Fair trade means paying people what they deserve for the amount of work and goods they contribute. They are gathering amazing ingredients which in turn makes amazing cosmetics; they should be paid a fair price for that. Many (most) companies are more concerned with a profit than trading fairly. Lush is not one of those companies.

While they do not have a large amount of fair trade ingredients, they do get two of their widely used ingredients from a Fair Trade Agreement. LUSH purchases organic shea butter from the Gurugu village and the Akoma co-operative in Northern Ghana, and fair trade cocoa butter from the Ivory Coast. You can feel good about that. Every time you purchase something that has a fair trade ingredient in it, you'll be directly influencing their communities.

Lush also has a body cream called Charity Pot in which all proceeds go to the charities of their choice.