At Cosy Owl we are pleased to be able to offer an ever-growing range of Vegan Candle Making Supplies.  We have a strong ethical ethos and ensure all our products are sustainably sourced, environmentally friendly, cruelty free and increasingly, vegan friendly. 

For your convenience we clearly mark every product to show if it is completely vegan friendly and you can rest assured that our products are ethical and sustainably sourced. We are also continually reducing the environmental impact of our packaging, whilst ensuring that our products get to you in the condition that you would expect them to. Our goal is to help you make the type of candles that you want, and we know that organic, ethical and vegan friendly ingredients are an important part of enabling you to do that.

Below we discussed in further detail how to create more ethical candles and how we can help you to achieve this.

Veganism within the candle making industry

The main reasons people become vegan are because of their love and respect for animals as well as the environment. More and more people are changing their diets and their living habits in a bid to stop / reduce animal cruelty and live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. In this article we are going to explore what you can do when making candles to ensure you have a vegan friendly and or environmentally friendly product at the end.

Animal Cruelty

Here at Cosy Owl we are pleased to promote that our products are cruelty free, all products / ingredients used by our manufacturers are traceable and follow cruelty free processes from start to finish. However, we realise that vegan friendly is a step beyond this.

A product being cruelty free is a guarantee that not only has it never been tested on animals but also, none of the ingredients in it have been either. You can have cruelty free products that contain meat if the animals associated to this element were raised and killed humanely. Ensuring there has been no exploitation of animals has become a large factor in our industry where we have seen a rapid growth in end users who want a more friendly product. It is certainly something you should advertise if your product is cruelty free as it is a great selling point.

Environmentally Friendly

Products that are listed as environmentally friendly are those that cause no harm to the environment. You will see this expressed in the candle industry primarily as eco-friendly; this is because you are talking about a product and its ingredients. Other terms you can use to advertise your product are green, clean or even sustainable.

If you are using a vegetable-based wax with a pure cotton or paper blend wick that is farmed in a sustainable manner, you can state that you have an eco-friendly product. If you are using Paraffin wax, for example, this is not environmentally friendly because it is not renewable but is a by-product of the oil industry also meaning that it is not carbon neutral. Therefore, you cannot advertise that you have an eco-friendly product.

Vegan Friendly

You can make candles that contain all naturally sourced products but are not classed as vegan friendly. Just because your ingredients are environmentally friendly and/or cruelty free doesn’t mean that the finished product can be classed as vegan, so make sure you know the difference because your customer will!

A perfect example of this would be a Beeswax candle. Whilst the wax is naturally sourced, environmentally friendly, can be cruelty free (depending on how it is sourced) and it contains no chemicals, it is not vegan friendly. It is classed as an animal by-product which put simply means it belongs to Bees and therefore not for our use, therefore is seen in a similar way to cow’s milk for example. If you are wanting a vegan wax it will need to be a plant-based wax such as Soy, Palm or Rapeseed. If using palm wax please be sure to check that this is ethically sourced, especially since there has been a lot of negative press around Palm oil.

So how does this impact you as a candle maker?

If you are looking to appeal to this target area will this be something you need to focus on or if it is something you are passionate about.

A good starting place is to make sure that the supplies you source to make candles are cruelty free, environmentally friendly and Vegan friendly. You should be able to find out this information easily from your supplier, using an SDS sheet which should be provided. If not, you can request one.

The area in which you make your products should be sanitised and prepared correctly to ensure there are no chances of cross contamination, especially if you use the space for cooking and/or making other non-vegan products. Alternatively, if space allows, I would recommend having separate working stations.

We always advise that if you are making and advertising your products as cruelty free and vegan friendly, you should have this evidenced with a statement from the supplier and/or manufacturer. It rarely happens but it is better to be prepared in case your end user wants to investigate this further. Having this readily available will also come across well and back up your promise to the customer.

Some of our customers who only create vegan friendly products have put together a mini booklet or informative postcard outlining their promise to the customer. These tend to contain brief information about the products (primarily the wax) and how these have been sourced ethically and whether this is local which can also be deemed as a positive, supporting local businesses.