Wax is the most constant part of a candle. You can switch up the fragrances at any time, but the wax, is oftentimes going to be the same across all collections of a candle company. In this blog, you’ll learn what is candle wax, a few popular wax types on the market today, and most importantly, why you should only buy coconut wax candles.
What is Wax?
According to the National Candle Association, all waxes are essentially hydrocarbons, which means they are largely composed of hydrogen and carbon atoms. It is a solid that becomes a liquid when heated above room temperatures.
Furthermore, when a candle is lit, the heat of the flame vaporizes the liquid wax, it turns it into a hot gas, and starts to break down the hydrocarbons into molecules of hydrogen and carbon. These vaporized molecules are then drawn up into the flame, where they react with oxygen from the air to create heat, light, water vapor and carbon dioxide.
We know what you're thinking, yes, the above is an extremely scientific definition of wax. Basically, wax is the material that is used to make the body of candles. There are a plethora of wax types on the market today: paraffin (petroleum), beeswax, soy, palm, rice bran, and more but which one is the one that you should look out for when buying a candle?
Popular Waxes on the Market
Paraffin (Petroleum) wax is the world’s most commonly used wax. Paraffin is mainly used by big name brands due to it being extremely cheap, having a great ease of production, ability to hold lots of fragrance, and consistent burning qualities. This wax is derived directly from petroleum, the same petroleum that is found in gasoline. Petroleum causes great concern for the environment due to its toxicity which contributes to air pollution, acid rain, and various illnesses in humans. However, you would have to burn a great deal of paraffin wax candles to be exposed to a significant health concern. But we like to think to ourselves often, “why expose our lovely customers to those concerns in the slightest bit if we don’t need to?”
Now palm wax is an all-natural wax (yay!) and is derived from palm oil primarily from palms grown in Southeast Asia. Palm wax is primarily used because of its similar quality burning properties compared to paraffin. However, unfortunately the majority of palm oil is grown and harvested in an unsustainable and destructive manner, which causes havoc on the local ecosystem, communities, and the climate. So with that being said, why use palm wax when we don’t need to either?
Beeswax is another all-natural wax and has been used in candles for more than 1,000 years. It’s derived from the honeycombs of honeybees and is obtained by melting the empty comb in boiling water. Beeswax is an expensive candle wax, and when lit burns slowly (so you get your monies worth); however, it has a unique aroma which makes it challenging to make a scented candle. Most of you are buying candles for the scent, right? So for this reason we opted out of this wax as well.
Soy wax is also an all-natural wax on the market. It’s a cheap wax and is produced by hydrogenating soybean oil into a solid. Soy wax being cheap comes as a no brainer to us since the soybean industry is HUGE in the USA. Soy wax offers slow burning properties similar to beeswax but unfortunately, doesn’t hold fragrance well which causes for faint scented candles. Personally, we also are not fans of soy due to the soybean crop being 94% genetically modified and sprayed with a ton of weed killer and other pesticides, fertilizers, and nasties so we opted out from soy wax too.
Coconut Wax: Why You Should Only Buy Candles With It and Why We Only Use It
Finally, the moment you’ve been waiting on: coconut wax. The coconut wax in our candles is derived from coconut oil blended with another natural wax for a beautiful burning candle. Our coconut wax blend is FREE of soy, FREE of paraffin/petroleum, and only uses FDA approved waxes. The coconut in our candles also comes from a renewable source and has been blended for specific use to provide you guys with a clean, slow burning, high fragranced candle.
Coconut wax isn’t widely used on the market today due to it being extremely expensive per pound. However, we don’t care! We pride ourselves on providing the best, clean products that we can create for our customers, friends, and family.
Ultimately, we are proud to provide a candle where the wax is obtained through a natural process (sustainable), clean burning (non-toxic), slow burning (you get your monies worth), and most importantly high fragranced that you can enjoy while lit. Check out our latest collection for yourself!