What Candle Wax We Use and Why: A Sustainability Perspective Deep Dive
- flickeringfelineca
- Jan 5, 2024
- 5 min read
There are many kinds of candle wax out there...from soy to paraffin to beeswax, to blends everywhere in between! When selecting a wax for Flickering Feline's candles, we were concerned with many things: sustainability, health, function, appearance, price, and more. In this post, we'll explore:
what kinds of candle wax options there are
what sustainability means when it comes to candle wax
why we chose our wax from a sustainability perspective
a note on health concerns about burning paraffin candles versus soy candles and the (lack of) evidence to support this
What kinds of candle waxes are there?
There are many kinds of candle wax, but the 2 main groups are natural or plant-based waxes (including soy, coconut, beeswax, etc.) and paraffin wax. Paraffin wax is a byproduct of the oil industry (1) and is a popular choice for making candles because it holds color and fragrance very well, is affordable, and is easy to work with (2). Recently, there have been growing concerns among consumers that paraffin wax emits harmful fumes when burned. Therefore, more people have been looking to buy natural wax candles, so more candle makers have begun selling natural wax candles to meet this demand.
If we temporarily put aside concerns about health and focus on the sustainability of each kind of wax, we might notice a tendency for people to believe any natural wax must be 'sustainable.' However, while it is accurate that natural waxes are better for the environment than paraffin because they are not coming from the oil industry, it is actually much more complicated than this.
What does 'sustainable' mean in regards to candle wax?
There are several factors to consider when it comes to the sustainability of a natural waxes. While it may seem like all natural waxes are the same because they all come from plants and are therefore renewable resources, how the plant is grown matters when it comes to sustainability (3). Some important factors include:
does the crop require extensive deforestation to grow?
how often does the crop need to be replanted or have land cleared to replant it?
are harmful pesticides used to grow the crop?
are the crops genetically modified?
are very large quantities of water needed to grow the crop?
Additionally, how the plant products are processed also matters. Wax is a manufactured product that often has additives put in to help with things like melt point or stability (4); saying a wax is made of 100% anything can be hard to confirm, especially since manufacturers are not required to disclose their exact ingredients list.
So, we were thinking about how crops are grown and processed - how did Flickering Feline use this information to determine what wax to use?
What about coconut wax?
The wax we initially liked the most from a sustainability perspective was coconut wax for a few main reasons:
coconut trees do not need pesticides to thrive, so are usually grown without them (5,6)
coconut trees have a high yield because trees live many years and can be harvested from year-round (5)
they offer some benefits for local ecosystems (including human, animal, and soil systems) (6)
But, coconut wax still had some downsides. Because coconuts are grown outside the United States, emissions from shipping were a concern. Additionally, it is hard to know what the conditions were for farmers producing the coconuts that were used to make the cases of wax that arrive at our doorstep. Lastly, coconut wax has too low of a melting point to be used alone in candles, and it can be expensive. What other options were there?
What about soy wax?
Soy wax is a popular choice for candles today, and offers one sustainability benefit that coconut does not:
soy can be grown in the United States, which means less emissions involved from shipping
However, we were concerned about relying heavily on soy because:
soy takes a lot of land and deforestation to grow (7)
98% soy is grown using herbicides according to the 2020 Agricultural Chemical Use Survey (8)
soy is sometimes genetically modified to withstand the use of pesticides and lack of biodiversity in its farming conditions (9)
Although soy is affordable and works well alongside coconut wax, we thought it lost the sustainability battle with coconut. Soy was appealing to use in a blend, but didn't pass our standards to use alone.
What about...paraffin??
From a sustainability perspective, paraffin (a byproduct of oil production) does not look good. The oil industry:
contributes to global warming, air pollution, and emissions, which negatively affect human and environmental health (10)
drilling and oil spills are harmful to wildlife and natural habitats (10, 11)
fossil fuels are inherently unsustainable sources of energy because they are not renewable (12)
However, paraffin is cheap and performs very well in candles. It is often used in wax blends and is still a popular choice.
So what does Flickering Feline use?
We use a coconut soy blend (meaning it is mostly coconut with some soy) that has a minuscule amount of FDA food-grade paraffin included to improve the wax's performance.
...
HOLD ON! But I just said paraffin is bad, right? Why do we have some in our wax?
...
Let me explain. First, let me reiterate that it is a very small amount of paraffin. It is just enough to make the candle live up to our (and your) expectations. The gorgeous colors of our candles? The smooth tops? The paraffin is helping with that! Most candles today contain additives, and/or a little paraffin, to help with performance (4).
But more importantly, we did wrestle with this. We tested many waxes that were paraffin free, and they were not living up to our expectations. This does not mean that sustainability is not important to us. We determined that taking advantage of the candle quality benefits of using a blend with a miniscule amount of paraffin outweighed the tiny impact we could have on the oil industry if we purchased 0.000001% less of their total paraffin output.
Sustainability is more complex than simply claiming that something is 'green' or 'natural' because it originally came from a plant. We hope you've enjoyed our deep dive on what we considered from a sustainability perspective when we were choosing our candle wax!
If you want to learn more, check out the resources linked at the bottom of this page, or read more of our blog posts about sustainability!
A note on health concerns about burning paraffin candles
This will be covered in a separate post, but the short answer to this concern is: a 2021 study compared emissions of scented candles with different waxes, including soy and paraffin. The emissions of all wax types were similar and all were well below indoor standards for emissions of combustion by-products (13). In other words, paraffin and soy are both safe to burn.
For additional studies, see this list: https://candles.org/research-studies/ (14)
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