That sounds kind of rude doesn’t it…? Mind your beeswax. But I certainly don’t mean it that way.
In last week’s podcast episode I had a convo with Freddy who runs the Etsy shop Liquor Wicks with his girlfriend Meaghan. They make and sell candles in empty liquor bottles. It’s a type of upcycling craft and they know their stuff.
Well, during my conversation with Freddy he mentioned that their candles are made from 100% soy wax and that got my attention because, although I hadn’t put two and two together before that I wondered why he stressed that they used 100% soy wax.
I eventually got around to asking him what was so special about soy wax and he explained that not all waxes were created equally… I am paraphrasing, but you can listen to our conversation here:
- Soy wax (cleaner burning, if 100% soy)
- Paraffin wax (I think this is the most common kind in many of the less expensive candles). Paraffin wax is also the type they use in the nail shops when you go for a mani-pedi and get the “paraffin wax” treatment on your hands and/or feet… All of a sudden everything started clicking in my mind
- Bees wax – yes of course! I knew that… Bees make wax too!
I remember growing up in Nigeria, we used to have power outages on an almost daily basis so I’m no stranger to candle-burning. Back then though, I abhorred the times we would have to use candles at night after the sun had set. I’m pretty sure those candles were made of paraffin wax, especially because Nigeria is an oil-producing country and paraffin wax is a crude oil derivative.
Little did we care whether it was clean-burning or not, that was just not a priority, though, truth be told, I don’t believe paraffin wax is toxic even though it’s a petroleum by-product.
Living in America as an adult, candle-burning is much more of a romantic affair now than it was when we had to use them out of necessity in a developing country.
Now I actually even love candles and burning candles, I would even consider myself a candle connoisseur… How ironic 🙂