A couple of weeks ago, Recycla’s family lost electricity during a thunderstorm. Services were not restored for many hours, which meant the family had to find some way to bring light into their dark house. Luckily, they had a good supply of candles on hand and the family ended up sitting at the kitchen table and reading by candlelight. (Well, until Recycla’s husband remembered the portable DVD player the family uses on car trips and then set the children up on the sofa with the little screen glowing in the darkness.)
Recycla doesn’t burn candles often, but when she does, she prefers to use either beeswax or soy candles, instead of paraffin candles.
Why?
Paraffin candles are made from petroleum, which is heavily processed and treated with carcinogenic chemicals. The black smoke that a paraffin candle emits is basically diesel exhaust. You don’t want to create air pollution in your house, do you?
Luckily, the Eco Women are here to share their favorite beeswax and soy candle sources:
- Enviro Girl shops at the Eco Candle Company and often buys their candles as gifts for family and friends. For her, it is a local business and one she is happy to support.
- Recycla prefers unscented candles because of her allergies and she recently found two Etsy sellers who sell unscented beeswax candles — OneHoney and Dragon06. She bought a large supply of tapers, votives, and big chunky columns and is now set for a summer of thunderstorms.
- Bluecorn Naturals sells both beeswax and soy, both scented and unscented.
- Tigerflag Natural Perfumery sells unscented beeswax candles.
- If your town has a farmers’ market, it’s possible someone is selling candles there. Recycla is going to investigate this option the next time she’s at her local farmers’ market.
Beeswax and soy candles are usually more expensive than their cheap, made-in-China paraffin cousins. However, when kept out of drafts, beeswax candles are dripless and burn for much longer than paraffin candles. So while they cost more at first, they save you money in the long run.
So, the next time you buy candles, give beeswax and soy a try.
Photo courtesy of BeeswaxCandles.com.
