Luxury Candle Ethical Ratings- Our System

What makes a candle good?

I've written previously about my motivations for starting Kyrra- a major part of that was the frustration with luxury candlemakers and a lack of transparency around sustainability. How could they charge so much for a candle and not care? I'll admit to being a big spender on these. I love the fragrance of a high quality candle in my home. Obviously, I'd love you to buy Kyrra candles because I've worked really hard on them and think they're awesome. But you want choice too. Even I sometimes smell a competitor candle and want it! If you're obsessed with sustainability like me, you might want a bit of guidance in choosing- and it might not come as a surprise that some of these brands greenwash or are purposely sketchy about the detail because they know you care about sustainability when all they care about is profit margin. So I thought I'd come up with an ethical scoring system and start by rating the top ten brands I could think of in our segment. I've done my best to explain the rationale below. Please do comment on any additional suggestions you might have or other brands you want me to cover. Hopefully this is useful to you. And while it may seem like "marking our own homework" (because yes, Kyrra gets top marks of course), I've tried to be fair and reasonable. Do bear in mind that Kyrra was founded from the start with the purpose of being the most ethical and sustainable premium candle company around so it makes sense that we'd do quite well in this. If you have any additional criteria you'd like me to add to the scoring system then do add your comments below!

The System:

We've come up with a simple traffic light system. Green gets a point, amber half a point and red no points. There's a green+ for going above and beyond the standard but this doesn't confer extra points at present

We checked companies' "standard size" candle, which usually ranges between 180 and 300g

The Criteria:

Wax- Paraffin gets a red mark. Soy gets amber. Both are bad for the environment (even if they say the soy is GM free or US grown etc). Rapeseed, coconut or any organic certified wax get a green light. The only reasons to use paraffin and soy is because they're cheap and easy to get consistent results. Any other claims about these are greenwashing. Companies claiming a "natural wax" or "vegetable wax" blend are usually talking about soy and purposely obfuscating because they don't want you to know they're charging such high prices for cheap wax. They might say they have a "proprietary wax blend" but this often means they are simply making a lot of candles and buy a specific recipe in bulk- it has nothing to do with sustainability

Fragrance- 100% Natural fragrance gets a green light, partial or fully synthetic is red. Why? Synthetic fragrance molecules are often produced either from petrochemicals, or using harsh chemical processes to modify natural products. Companies using synthetic fragrances in their candles are doing so because they want to achieve very specific or consistent fragrance results. This is understandable, but when it comes to the environment, responsibly sourced natural fragrances are better. We deem encouraging responsible agriculture and providing income for those communities more ethically desirable than industrial production of synthetic fragrance molecules, even if they do smell good.

Vessel recyclability- Candle vessels, in our opinion, should be recyclable. If companies stated that vessels are recyclable, or even better provide instructions for recycling on their site, they get a green light. Vessels that look like they should be recyclable but no information is given get an amber (we aren't sure, and if they are recyclable they should be encouraging it explicitly). Non-recyclable vessels get a red light. Of note, companies claiming that their vessels are "reusable" are often obfuscating as this means their vessels aren't recyclable. This is greenwashing and doesn't pass our test.

Refills- Are the candles refillable? We mark green if refills are available for the range we are assessing and red if not. For companies claiming that their vessels can be "reused" it seems hypocritical not to make refills available. Surely the best reuse for a candle vessel is as a candle? There are only so many pen holders and plantpots a house needs.

Packaging- Fully recyclable and plastic-free packaging gets a green, partially recyclable or not declared is amber and not recyclable is a red. We believe it is the role of a responsible company to inform consumers if packaging is recyclable before purchase- if they don't they don't care that much. Even better, recycling instructions should be provided on their website although that hasn't affected our scoring at this time

Energy in Manufacturing- We checked each manufacturer's claims on renewable energy for manufacture. Green uses 100% renewables, red doesn't. We filtered out greenwashing claims about renewable energy in stores or offices etc- a common ploy to make brands seem greener than they are. We looked specifically at their manufacturing credentials.

Country of Manufacture- As a UK based company, we're looking at how far things have to travel as well as ethical manufacturing standards. UK made products score green, EU products are amber and US or other countries are red. Why? UK products are made to stringent environmental standards and don't have far to travel. EU made products are also made to high standards but have a bit further to travel. US and other countries certainly have further to travel, but also have slacker environmental and labour laws than the UK/EU making them less safe ethical choices. We recognise that ingredients for candles will be imported from many countries, but as this specific information is impossible to get hold of in most cases we have used the manufacturing country as the key determinant for this score point

Corporate ownership- Is the brand owned by a large corporation or investment fund? We realise this is a controversial issue. Many people have a kneejerk negative reaction to "corporations". We understand it's not that simple. Large corporations can be a force for good, individual owners may be bad. However, when corporations are "green" for the sake of a particular brand yet not in their overall behaviour, this is a red flag for us. Many corporate owners are interested in profit over ethics, and while all businesses should be interested in profit, this doesn't have to be at the expense of ethics. We mark green for overall owners with a strong background of ethical integrity and red for those with a history of poor environmental or ethical behaviours or, in the case of private equity, no clear ethical investment criteria. Amber is awarded when the owning company itself may have ethical credentials but is strongly linked to other companies that don't share those values.

Do check out our next blog post for the full scoring of our selected brands