Ingredient to Avoid: Candelilla Wax

Candelilla wax is a commonly used substitute for beeswax in vegan skincare. It has a high melting point and other similar properties to beeswax, which make it easy to swap into traditional recipes. So why don't I use it in my products? Well, there are two reasons. 

Reason #1: Mexico is a long way away! 
The candelilla shrub only grows in Mexico and southern USA, so whichever way you look it, it's clocking up a lot of air-miles to get to the UK. I always strive to use ingredients that come from as close by as possible, whenever I can. 

Reason #2: The ethics of production
Unfortunately, the methods of production used to obtain candelilla wax are often far from ethical. It tends to be harvested by extremely poor peoples vulnerable to exploitation, and the wax needs to be separated out using sulphuric acid. Some companies are very happy to supply their workers with the acid they need, but not the safety equipment, which they deem as an unnecessary expense. You can watch an excellent demonstration of the problem in this clip from the BBC documentary Beauty Laid Bare. 

Now of course, it's not always as simple as: unethical practices = boycott. When you stop buying something from a poor community that depends on the pitiful income they receive from selling that thing, it can mean that the people you are aiming to help simply starve to death instead, because now they have no income at all. That's why in some cases I've chosen to keep a certain ingredient in my products, where I've been able to source a reliable fair trade scheme that is totally transparent about how it is delivering an equitable deal for local communities and caring for the environment. But in the case of candelilla wax, I haven't found such a scheme (this is not to say they don't exist, but I haven't come across one), and I also want to remind readers of my first point: Mexico is still a very long way away! 

I'll be sharing more about the waxes I've selected for my products in a later blog post.