Lush has stripped away all the packaging in its Manchester shop - and its staff stripped off too to celebrate.

The cosmetics retailer relaunched its Market Street branch as a Naked shop today with a cheeky stunt that saw its employees wear nothing but aprons.

The company said it wanted to highlight the global environmental crisis posed by plastic packaging - echoing its campaign in 2007 when staff from 55 shops across the UK went naked for the day.

From now on everything sold in the store will be free from plastic wrappings and bottles, building on the success of the company's shampoo and conditioner bars and solid deodorants, soaps and even toothpaste.

The company also launched its Naked skincare range in December, which includes solid facial oils and cleansers and a seaweed gel eye mask.

The Manchester shop is the first Lush Naked branch in the UK, following on from the Milan and Berlin branches, which opened last year.

Shoppers will be able to scan products using the LushLabs app for ingredients and usage instructions in the absence of labels.

Mark Constantine OBE, Lush co-founder and managing director, said: "In Lush we work in an industry where the packaging costs the customer more than the product.

"Now, the customer needs to worry about how to recycle something they didn’t want to buy in the first place. This seems like a raw deal to us. If we can cut out all the plastic packaging, we can give our customers better value for money."

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

Lush has sold around 38 million naked shampoo bars around the world since 2007, which it estimates has saved more than 90 million plastic shampoo bottles from being used. Each shampoo bar is said to provide as many washes as 2.4 bottles of liquid shampoo.

Mr Constantine added: "Why Manchester for our first Naked shop in the UK? It's a great city where we have a cluster of shops.

"Our Market street shop has been offering great service for the longest time so it felt appropriate to do it there."