When you light a candle, the flame is burning the wax. So the most useful question you can ask about any candle is a simple one: what was that wax before it was a candle?
For most of history there were only two answers. Most homes burned tallow, rendered animal fat, and lived with what the National Candle Association calls its "foul, acrid odor." The alternative was beeswax, which burned without the smell. But beeswax was expensive, so it lit churches and the homes of the wealthy, and almost nobody else.
It was expensive for a reason. Worker bees make wax from eight small glands on the underside of their abdomens, and to make one pound of it, the colony has to eat at least eight pounds of its own honey. Churches kept paying that price anyway. The Roman Catholic Church still requires its ceremonial candles to be at least 51 percent beeswax.
Then, in the 1850s, chemists learned how to separate paraffin wax efficiently, and candles changed. Paraffin burned cleanly, burned consistently, and was cheaper to make than any candle fuel before it. The everyday candle had arrived.
Where paraffin comes from is worth knowing. It is a leftover from refining crude oil. When refineries make lubricating oil, they have to strip out the wax so the oil stays fluid in the cold. That wax is sold on as a by-product, and paraffin candle wax is made from it.
That is not a verdict on how paraffin burns. It is simply the answer to the question we started with. Light a paraffin candle and what you are burning is a leftover from the oil industry.
In the 1990s, agricultural chemists started looking for a different answer, and they found one in soybeans. Soy wax gave candle makers a wax that started life as a crop.
That is the answer we chose too. Our wax is three things, and each one started somewhere you would recognize:
- Soy, 55%. From soybeans.
- Coconut, 35%. From coconuts.
- Beeswax, 10%. From the hive, and left unrefined.
No paraffin. No phthalates. No dyes. No synthetic fragrance.
Ask what your wax was before it was a candle, and ours has a short answer: a bean, a nut and a honeycomb.
Sources
- Tallow, beeswax in churches, and the arrival of paraffin in the 1850s; soy wax in the 1990s. National Candle Association, "History of Candles." https://candles.org/history-of-candles/
- Eight wax glands; beeswax in Catholic ceremonial candles. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Value-added products from beekeeping, Chapter 4: "Wax." https://www.fao.org/4/w0076E/w0076e12.htm
- Eight pounds of honey for one pound of wax. University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, "About Honey Bees." https://www.uaex.uada.edu/farm-ranch/special-programs/beekeeping/about-honey-bees.aspx
- Paraffin as a by-product of dewaxing lubricating oil. Penn State University, John A. Dutton Institute, FSC 432: Petroleum Refining, "Dewaxing." https://courses.ems.psu.edu/fsc432/node/628
- Our wax blend. Glow Guardian product specification.
The range
Pure Glow, Pure Protection™
Soy 55%. Coconut 35%. Beeswax 10%. Three cotton wicks, lead-free.
No paraffin. No phthalates. No dyes. No synthetic fragrance.
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