Reducing our environmental impact
Let’s be honest — it’s cheap and easy to blend petroleum-based paraffin wax with synthetic fragrance oils and mass-produce something that smells reasonably pleasant. But aside from your moral standpoint, the hidden cost of that choice is the incremental harm it causes to the environment.
“But it’s only a candle,” right? Well, the paraffin wax market was valued at around £6.9 billion in 2023 — a huge indicator of its global use. Paraffin wax is derived from petroleum and is estimated to produce around 2 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year. When burned, it can release chemicals such as benzene and toluene, which may irritate the respiratory system — particularly for people with asthma or allergies. It’s also non-biodegradable, breaking down slowly and releasing these compounds back into the environment.
By contrast, our coconut wax is naturally sourced, renewable, and offers an exceptionally clean burn — with no soot and no harmful emissions. It’s been developed specifically for container candles, contains no animal products, and has never been tested on animals. It’s free from GM ingredients, soy, palm, or paraffin, and is both biodegradable and vegan-friendly.
Does it cost more? Absolutely. But for us, the environmental impact had to come first — and the beautiful burn quality of our wax is the bonus. Everyone wins.
Building on a sustainable base
Candles are ubiquitous — but that’s certainly not to say they are all alike. Our aim is simple: if you buy one of our candles, you can feel confident that we’re doing everything possible to minimise our environmental impact.
Coconut wax is not only a wonderful material to work with — beautifully smooth, long-burning, and capable of an exceptional scent throw — it’s also incredibly sustainable. It is 100% biodegradable, meaning it will naturally decompose when any remnants are disposed of.
Unlike other waxes such as palm or paraffin, which often rely on large-scale production linked to deforestation, coconut wax does not contribute to this problem. Coconut trees can live for up to 80 years, and because they grow naturally, they don’t require pesticides and are entirely renewable — ensuring that the wax in our candles supports both sustainability and wellbeing.
Our coconut wax is biodegradable and gives you a longer burning candle ...win win
Our fragrances
There’s a choice to make when deciding how to fragrance a candle. Do you use a man-made product — a fragrance oil — which offers an almost endless range of scent profiles from “beach” to “Sunday breakfast”? Or do you stay true to fragrances that come from the natural world around us?
We’ll let you guess which one we chose (it wasn’t a difficult decision!).
All our products are fragranced using 100% pure essential oils — the aromatic compounds extracted from fruits, flowers, bark, leaves, and other natural materials, distilled into concentrated form. The purity of our essential oils is guaranteed, meaning they are derived directly from plants without additives or synthetic ingredients.
We work exclusively with suppliers who share our values — those who take pride in offering vegan-friendly, cruelty-free products and who prioritise environmentally responsible methods of production. This ensures that our essential oils are not only beautifully effective but are also produced with minimal impact on the planet, reflecting our ongoing commitment to ethics, sustainability, and wellbeing.
All our products use 100% pure essential oils
Our packaging
So that’s our candles — but how do they get to you?
Plastic is definitely our enemy. It’s a wonderful material in many ways — and certainly recyclable — but the sheer quantity that ends up in landfill or in our oceans has rightly come into sharp focus in recent years.
All our packaging is fully recyclable. We think it’s rather beautiful, of course — but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t also be recyclable or biodegradable, just like everything else. If you choose to keep our boxes, we’d be delighted — they make lovely keepsake boxes or handy storage for “bits and bobs”. But if it’s time to say goodbye, rest assured they’ll be reborn as someone else’s book in the blink of an eye.
Our refill candle boxes are even simpler, designed to minimise volume and make every step — from packing to delivery — as efficient and environmentally friendly as possible.
Small steps, big impact. All our packaging is locally recyclable
Our delivery - FREE!
Everything you buy from Aycee Apothec comes with free UK delivery as standard. We do this for two reasons - firstly you've just bought something from us and the least we could do is not ask you for more money just to get your hands on it.
Secondly - by choosing a more "leisurely" delivery timescale we can reduce the delivery carbon footprint by allowing for more efficiency of logistics and better consolidation of mail for delivery.
Of course, there are paid-for delivery methods if you want to choose those options but if you're not in a rush and can wait a day or two, then just relax and let the anticipation build. It'll be there soon enough.
Our refills
Sustainability doesn't just mean choosing the very best ingredients. We think our candle jars are beautiful and they can be used again and again for all sorts of things, but maybe you don't want another jar?
Our refills are designed to fit snugly into your large Aycee Apothec jars and give you hours more enjoyment of our signature scents at a fraction of the cost, whilst allowing you to reuse our lovely jars in the way they were designed to be used. Our refills are packaged simply and securely in fully recyclable packaging, and are coming soon to our online store. Sustainability doesn't have to cost the earth.
