The Body Shop 'Return Recycle Repeat' Event - AD Gifted

*I was invited to The Body Shop for a Blogger Event and was gifted a product afterwards. All views are my own though

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you will probably be aware that I’m a big fan of The Body Shop. I’ve used their products since my pre-teens (does anyone else remember the bath pearls?! I used to absolutely love popping those!) and continue to enjoy their beauty items today. So when I saw that The Body Shop in Festival Place Basingstoke were having a blogger event a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t resist going along to check out their new products. 

It was one of the hottest days of the year so far when my Mum and I made our way over to Basingstoke to see the team, and unfortunately it turned out that the air conditioning in the store had broken, so we were all rather sweaty! But it didn’t stop us from having a lovely evening hearing all about what The Body Shop are doing at the moment. My evening started with a relaxing hand and arm massage to test the moisture levels of my skin after using either Body Butter or Body Yogurt (spoiler – both did an amazing job and there really wasn’t much between them when it came to improving my skin’s moisture levels). Although I like both products, I feel like I sway more towards ‘Team Yogurt’ in the summer, simply because it is so cooling and absorbs really quickly. I could quite happily have sat there enjoying a massage all evening, but there were other products to check out and projects to hear about.

The staff were really excited, as they had just received a delivery of a brand new product, which even they hadn’t had a chance to try out yet! So I got to have a sneak peek at what it was and how it works, and let me tell you – it looks like it’s going to be good fun to use! I don’t want to give too much away, as I know there are some spoilers going up on Instagram over the next couple of weeks. So I thought I would just share a few pictures with you, and let you guess what you think it might be!

Moving on to the main reason for the event – we were there to hear all about The Body Shop’s brand new ‘Return Recycle Repeat’ scheme. They have realised that plastic pollution is a global crisis and have come up with a project to protect our planet and empower people to do the same. So, in a large selection of Body Shop stores, you will now find a box like the one in the picture, in which you can put ANY plastic beauty packaging from ANY brand to be recycled (there are a few things that cannot be recycled, such as products that may contain flammable liquids e.g. perfume bottles). It doesn’t have to be products you’ve bought in The Body Shop, which is amazing because so many beauty products cannot be recycled in our kerbside recycling bins. However, if you are a member of the Love Your Body Club (it’s easy to join here) and you bring back five empty Body Shop products to recycle, you will receive a £5 voucher! 

The Body Shop have teamed up with a company called Terracycle®, who will be helping them to make this scheme a success. They are global market leaders within the recycling industry and are present in 21 markets, looking to enhance brands through finding sustainable solutions to 21^st century issues with waste and packaging. They focus on the triple bottom line:

·     Planet – The Terracycle® primary objective is to recycle waste that is typically considered “non-recyclable”, diverting billions of pieces of waste from landfill and incineration since 2006

·     People –To date, Terracycle® has paid more than $10 million to schools and non-profit organisations in return for the waste collected through the programme

·     Profit –Terracycle® is structured as a for-profit social business, however maintains a small profit margin so that the rest can be reinvested to enhance the scheme and pursue further sustainability projects

If there is any packaging that cannot be recycled by Terracycle®, it is then made into post consumer goods such as benches and watering cans. One of my local schools even won a competition with Terracycle® recently, which will see the installation of a new playground made from recycled products! The Body Shop aims to collect 25% more packaging than they sell, and by 2030 they aim to have no single use products or packaging. 

As well as the Return Recycle Repeat scheme, The Body Shop are also committed to tackling the plastic crisis in a slightly different way. As well as plastic affecting marine and ocean life, it also affects people. In India, almost a third of waste is uncollected, which has given rise to 1.5 million people known as ‘waste pickers’ who collect this waste in the informal sector. The Body Shop have partnered up with an organisation in Bengaluru, India, who call themselves ‘Green Force.’ They work with ‘waste pickers’ who work tirelessly to clean up their city’s streets. 

These ‘waste pickers’ are mostly made up of what are known as ‘dalits,’ (formally known as ‘untouchables’) – the lowest social group in India’s caste system. This makes them extremely vulnerable to discrimination and poor working conditions. By working with Green Force, The Body Shop can help to provide access to more sanitary working conditions, a fair price and the respect and recognition they deserve. 

Not using plastic isn’t the only answer to dealing with the plastic crisis. If used responsibly, plastic can be sustainable, so The Body Shop are encouraging people to show love for the plastic we do use. This is why they have started using Community Trade recycled plastic from Bengaluru, India. It not only helps to tackle the existing problem, but it will also help to empower the ‘waste pickers’ that they support. Their Community Trade Partner, Plastics For Change, are a for-profit organisation that partners with local NGOs Hasiru Dala and Hasiru Dala Innovation (HDI) to provide Bengaluru’s waste pickers with a stable income and better opportunities, including boosting their skills and providing training for other areas such as urban gardening. 

So far, The Body Shop have started using their Community Trade recycled plastic in their 250ml Shampoo and Conditioner bottles. In the future, they want to buy even more Community Trade recycled plastics from their partners, so they can use it in more of their product packaging and strive to be even more sustainable, which definitely sounds like a step in the right direction.

After we’d heard all about what The Body Shop are doing to address the plastic crisis, we had a look at a few other new products that are currently out. They have a couple of new scents out for the summer, including Banana and Ginger. Both ranges are made from ‘Wonky Fruit and Veg,’ which is basically bananas and ginger that supermarkets won’t sell because they don’t look ‘perfect.’ So it’s great that these items aren’t going to waste and are instead making yummy smelling beauty products! The new products in the Banana range are also all now suitable for Vegans (and smell delicious – kind of like those foam banana sweets you can get!) I thought the Ginger range might smell a bit Christmassy, but it’s got citrus elements in it, which really gives it a summery vibe. 

They also have a few new biodegradable sheet masks for us to try out including Seaweed (for oily/combination skin), Vitamin C (for brightening sensitive skin), Aloe (for calming sensitive skin) and Vitamin E (for all skin types). At only £3.50 each and packed full of moisturising ingredients, these are perfect for some serious pampering. 

Also in the ‘Wonky Veg’ range are the Carrot Wash Energizing Face Cleanser and Carrot Cream Nature Rich Daily Moisturiser. Both are Vegan and made from 100% recyclable packaging, as well as being enriched with organic carrots and Community Trade organic Aloe Vera from Mexico. I’d never really thought of having carrot scented beauty products, but these are definitely worth a try!

The last thing I had a look at was some of the new make-up, as I always seem to forget about The Body Shop selling make-up! What really caught my eye were a couple of beautiful eyeshadow palettes – Paint in Colour and Own Your Naturals. The colours are perfect for the summer months, with a mixture of matte and shimmery shades. I particularly liked the range of colours in the Paint in Colour Palette, especially the glittery pink and gold! The other new make-up item that jumped out at me was the Happy Go Lash Mascara. It thickens and defines your lashes, and lasts all day without flaking, which is always a good thing! I particularly liked the pink packaging with green palm leaves on it – very summery!

Overall, we had a lovely time chatting to the staff from The Body Shop in Basingstoke, and I’m so pleased to hear the brand are making steps to start tackling the problems we have with plastic. I know I have watched and read a lot about the harm plastic is doing to our world and I do want to start making changes. But sometimes it feels so overwhelming when options to recycle, reuse and find more sustainable options are so hard to come by. So having a high street store offering this option to recycle plastic products and also supporting those who try to make plastic more sustainable is a brilliant thing to have. 

Are you a fan of The Body Shop? What do you think about their new schemes to help with the plastic crisis?

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Gift Ideas - Pregnancy Survival Box

I’m one of those people that love coming up with cute, fun and different gift ideas. Whether it’s for a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas, Easter, a new baby or just because – you will often find me jotting down ideas I’ve come up with late at night and browsing through Pinterest for inspiration! So I thought it might be nice if I started sharing on here some of the gifts I put together, so that if you’re also looking for ideas, you might find some inspiration here.

In today’s post, as I’ve just become an auntie for the second time, I thought I would show you one of the Pregnancy Survival Boxes I have put together for someone. We did do one of these for both of my sister-in-laws with very similar products in them, but these pictures are actually from one I put together for a friend of mine. When someone is first pregnant, they may experience a whole range of feelings, emotions and symptoms, so I thought it might be nice to receive a box of goodies from a loved one to help them through the next nine months. People will often start buying things for the baby and conversation often centres on the baby, so it’s nice for the Mum to feel like she’s being taken care of too.

To start with, you will need to find a nice box to put everything in. This can either be done right at the beginning, or it might be better to wait until you’ve bought everything so you know roughly how big a box you need. If you know the gender of the baby, you could get something to tie in with that, but it’s just as nice to get something neutral, or something that you think the Mum will like. We found this particular box in Homesense, where they have a brilliant range of all sorts of different gift boxes, but any nice box will work fine. The Mum-to-be that I gave this to now uses it as a memory box for her little boy, so it’s nice to know it’s been put to good use. 

Now, moving on to what I decided to put in the Pregnancy Survival Box. I actually started by asking around a few friends who already had babies, about what types of things they really wanted while they were pregnant. Obviously everyone is different, but it gave me some good general ideas for what a mum-to-be might appreciate. The first thing I wanted to get was some sort of pregnancy journal, as a lot of Mums I spoke to said they liked being able to look back at what they’d written once their baby had arrived, or when they went on to have subsequent children. I chose this Bump to Birthday Pregnancy and First Year Journal, which is beautifully presented and has room for so much information. It’s nice because it has a lot of prompts throughout the book, allowing the parents to write about things they may not have thought about. For each week, there is also some information about how the baby is growing, as well as spaces for scan pictures. The great thing about this journal is that it goes right up until the baby turns one, so the Mum-to-be will have details about the pregnancy and her child’s first year all in one book.

As well as the pregnancy journal, I wanted to put some sort of book in the box for the Mum-to-be to read before the baby arrived. There are so many factual books available that try to prepare someone for pregnancy (and they’re great in their own right), but I wanted something a little more fun, that would make my friend laugh. I had heard great things about The Unmumsy Mum and about how real it is (it includes everything about motherhood from the mess to the hilarious moments and how it’s totally fine to not know what you’re doing!) so after lots of research I picked that book to include. Other good motherhood books that you could look at putting in include Why Mummy Drinks, Happy Mum Happy Baby and How to Grow a Baby and Push it Out.

Once I’d sorted out which book to include, I knew I also wanted to find a good DVD for my friend to watch when she just needed to put her feet up for a bit. I wanted to try and find something related to having a baby, and a friend of mine recommended ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’, so I thought that sounded pretty apt! I still haven’t had a chance to watch it, but have given it to a few people now and they’ve all told me how brilliantly funny it is, so I definitely made the right choice!

Something else that I thought a Mum-to-be might like was a pregnancy/baby magazine to flick through. Sometimes trying to read through a huge book on pregnancy/having a baby/childhood just isn’t possible, and it’s much easier to spend a few minutes, while you drink a cup of tea, flicking through the pages of a magazine. So I went to my local shop and picked up Gurgle and Mother and Baby magazines to add to my box. 

One thing that most pregnant ladies will have to deal with at some point is morning sickness. And when I was doing my research for what to put in the box, so many people said that they would always have been grateful for things to try and help the nausea. This is obviously quite a personal thing, as some women can’t stand the sight or smell of certain foods, whilst others will find they have cravings for things that help with the sickness. So if you know the Mum-to-be well, it can help to do a bit of digging to try and find out what foods they are going for and which foods they are trying to avoid. The friend I made this box for had a real craving for Hula Hoops, so I bought a big multipack bag to include in the box. She also found that sucking mints helped with the nausea, so again, I found some mints to put in too. 

Alongside some food items, I also thought it would be nice to add some teas that are known for helping with nausea and sickness. Again, this will depend on the person you are making the box for. One of my sister-in-laws couldn’t stand hot drinks when she was pregnant, so there was obviously no point in putting tea in for her. But for this friend, I included some peppermint tea to help with nausea, and some camomile and honey to help her relax.

I know from speaking to friends and family that, when you’re pregnant, it can sometimes be hard to feel nice about your body. Everything is changing, your clothes don’t fit any more and you might be feeling uncomfortable. So I thought it was also really important to include some self-care items to help the mum-to-be treat herself and feel a bit pampered. I started with some pregnancy specific products from Cussons. I’m not sure if the individual products I bought for this box are still available now, but you can get a Mum and Me Bump Gift Pack from Amazon that includes Body Lotion, Bath Soak, Shower Cream and Stretch Mark Cream, which would make a nice little gift for someone. We actually gave my sister-in-law one of these, and she commented how much she loved the Stretch Mark cream, so it’s a nice way for someone to try the products before they decide if they want to buy bigger ones themselves.

I also thought it would be nice to put a selection of face masks in, so the mum-to-be could perhaps enjoy relaxing with a cup of tea whilst pampering her skin. Places like Superdrug and Boots usually sell individual sachets of face masks for all different skin types and reasons, so I picked up a few different ones to give my friend a few to choose from. 

Next up, I thought I would include a can of Batiste Oriental Dry Shampoo, mainly for those days when they’re not feeling brilliant and don’t feel up to doing a full hair wash. Obviously you could go for whatever fragrance or brand you fancy – I just chose this one because it smelt nice! 

I also thought, as part of the pampering side of things, I should include a candle, as I know how relaxing it can be to light some candles of an evening. And, of course, as it was for a pregnancy survival box, I chose the Baby Powder Yankee Candle, which smells incredible whether you’re having a baby or not!

Finally, for the mum-to-be, I decided you can’t have a pamper without painting your nails. As we didn’t know the gender of her baby, I picked one pink nail varnish and one blue, just to have both eventualities covered! I also found a cute card to include in the box, which said ‘And so, the adventure begins…’ on the front. At the time, it was very difficult to find a card that said ‘Mum-to-be’ on it, but more recently I’ve seen more of them cropping up. However, as the card I chose shows, you don’t need to get a specific pregnancy card for it to fit with the theme, and it will be the words that are inside that matter most. 

Although I didn’t want to make this box particularly centred on the baby (it was more for the Mum after all!) I did decide to put a little hat and booties in it that I’d found in John Lewis, just because they were cute! 

And that was everything I put in the Pregnancy Survival Box for my friend. She seemed to really love it when I gave it to her, as did both my sister-in-laws, and I like to think it helped to make them feel a bit special at a time when everything was changing. I hope this has given you some ideas for making your own box for someone you know that may have just announced a pregnancy. I had so much fun putting it all together and it was nice to spoil my friend with a few treats.

Have you given anyone a box like this before, or have you received one yourself? If you’ve been pregnant, what would you need in your Pregnancy Survival Box?! 

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