The road to a certified organic and vegan lip balm

Lip balms have been top of our things to make list for quite a while.

We enjoy whipping up a batch of lip balms for our own use (one of the many benefits of a fully stocked workshop) so developing a range for Soap Folk felt like a natural step.

Before we even took the ingredients down from the shelves we wrote a short pen portrait of what we wanted from our Soap Folk lip balms.  We knew we wanted our lip balms be certified organic to COSMOS standards. We thought about its taste (none), scent (light) and consistency (glidey). But there was more thing that stood out for us. We knew we wanted our lip balms to be suitable for vegans.

First, a challenge

Plant based waxes aren’t necessarily a like for like replacement for the more commonly used beeswax. They tend to have a thinner, glassy quality in balms, whereas beeswax lends creaminess. We knew we could overcome this problem with some clever blending, but there was a bigger hurdle to face first, namely finding a certified organic and vegan wax. 

Organic carnauba wax with its high melting point was the most obvious candidate. It’s derived from leaves of the wildly growing Brazilian palms, not to be confused with palm wax extracted from the Palm tree. In contrast to the palm oil industry, carnauba wax extraction does not require land conversion or deforestation. It can be harvested and processed without damaging its natural environment. What's more, organic carnauba wax is neither bleached or treated with any chemicals, and free from any type of pesticides. For something that you are putting on your lips, you might find this quite important.

Onto to the testing, and testing, and testing..

Over the long hot summer, we tried lots of different oils and butters, in lots of combinations. There were some early forerunners. We loved the richness of organic cocoa butter, and its inherently chocolatey scent gave real depth. Jojoba oil, a liquid wax, gave a heavier quality, without any stickiness.

We scooped out our balm into different types of packaging and containers and then roadtested them. In our back pockets, sitting out on a cold shelf, warm cars. You get the picture. We gave them to our children, to our mums and our best friends to try. And of course, we tried them on ourselves.

Like all our products, we know what goes into them, we know how they are made, how they perform. In short we can vouch for them. 

Whilst we don’t believe that the perfect natural lip balm exists and much is down to personal preference, we do think we’ve come up with a cracker of a balm.

A soothing and nourishing lip balm that’s not too hard, not too soft, not too waxy.

Just right