Lighting up my life with a candle refill
Today, we’re talking about candle refills! Yes, you heard me right. I shall explain in due time, fear ye not.
Apparently, I am on a refill bender. In my previous post, I wrote about fun, odd-ball refills that I find delightful. You heard me speak with soft hearts in my eyes about tiny jars of floss, my journey finding a refillable face cream, and the sheer luxury of refillable bubble bath. Bliss!
Now it’s time to wax poetic about…candles. 😉
(I’ll also touch on some of the problems with linear waste streams. As you know by now, I will find any excuse to talk trash about trash.)
Did you say candle refill?
Yes, it’s true, you can refill a candle. I know what you’re thinking because I’ve been thinking the same: HOW?!
Essentially, we are making candles here. But it’s so much more than that! We are buying a little candle-making kit, yes. We are using our own jars, also. We’re also improving our mental health, something we desparately need these days. (I’m saying “we” because maybe if I say “we” enough, one of you reading this will get on-board and join me in this candle-making spree.)
Using or reusing existing jars is the reason I’m writing about this – it’s one of my favourite things about refilling. Candles are no exception, but it’s a new idea for me and I’m excited about it.
(PS – in this post, I will be oscillating between different terms for candle containers: jar, votive, vessel…hopefully, this is not confusing.)
Late to the party, but bringing big candle energy
If you’re like most people with the Internet, you may have already figured out how to melt down the remaining wax in your candles, perhaps pooling your waxy bits together and making a new candle from the remains. I, apparently, am late to this party and just figuring it out. My excuse is that I’m relatively new to the candle scene. (This ties in with my recently becoming a Bath PersonTM.)
In any event, being able to refill my used candle jar means I don’t have to frustratedly walk around my house grumbling about where on earth I’m supposed to put a mostly-empty but still sort of waxy jar. Garbage? Recycling? What to do?!
Nope, now I get to clean out my jar and fill it with a new candle! How cool is that?
Dealing with candles in linear take-make-waste models
Candle jars and votives are one of those annoying waste streams that can be hard to deal with. If there is wax left in the container, they’re not suited for recycling. And yet, I am 99% sure that some old candle jars or tins end up in the recycling bin by us well-intentioned wish-cyclers (and by “us” I’m really just trying to make myself feel better by assuming I must not be the only one to have done this before?)
What’s frustrating and a bit confounding is that, where I live, candles (and candle wax) are filed under “donate” or “garbage.” It’s hard to know what my regional district really means here – I’d understand if they are referring to candles themselves, with no votives. As in, just the wax. But what if I have a candle votive that I clean out thoroughly? Can I recycle the votive?
You can see why linear waste systems are so fraught.
Stats on candle waste are sparse (and stats on how many folks are refilling or recyling their votives even sparser), but I found one site that talked about the rise of candle usage in the UK (we love hygge!) and the problems with traditional paraffin-based wax here. (Spoiler alert: paraffin is made from fossil fuels.)
Cleaning out the wax (clearing the way for the candle refill)
One thing I learned through this refill candle adventure was how to properly clean old wax out of my candle jar. That in and of itself was a huge lesson! If I stopped there, I’d already feel better because now, I’d be able to recycle or reuse the empty container. The jar I picked to refill with a new candle looked positively brand-new after I cleaned it out.
For those interested, I followed the boiling water method: boil water and pour it into your old, waxy candle jar, about halfway or at least covering the old wax. The wax will melt and start to drip up (yes, drip up, it’s actually quite cool!) and eventually, it will harden. Once it’s rock-solid, pop out that puck! I had to do this three times to get all the wax out. Then, I used a paper towel to wipe out the remaining waxy residue. Sparkly clean by the end!
How to refill a candle
Candle making is not new or earth-shattering. Melt wax, add a wick, presto change-o done!
Reusing old candle jars is definitely not new but it makes me feel hopeful when I see people trying to bring back circularity. How did we stray so far away from this path? Can I keep blaming capitalism?
It seems wild to me that we don’t have more refillable or DIY candle options, given how prevalent candles seem to be. The way I see it, if you want to reuse your existing candle jars, you basically have two options: clean out your old jar, buy some wax and a wick and DIY; or find someone who will do that work for you.
In my area, I’ve heard through a friend of one business refills candle jars, but because I myself haven’t tested this out, I’m not going to write about it here (yet!). I’ll be focusing on candle-making DIY.
This post was actually inspired by FILL, one of my local refilleries, who recently started a candle-refill enterprise that caught my attention. I wanted to see what it was all about and here we are!
The idea behind the Clean Candle Refill is to offer folks all the supplies they’d need to refill their old candle jars, instead of having to buy a new candle every time. Beyond the fun of DIY-ing, we, the candle-makers-in-training, also get to pick from a variety of scents, which I find delightful. For my first candle refill, I chose “tranquil sandalwood.”
Enjoy this photo gallery of my candle-making process. Fun!
Getting down to brass wicks
Let’s talk about costs and materials.
The dough
This project ended up being cost-neutral! That’s a win for me!
- Original candle: $24.98
- Refillable candle package: $25.00
I didn’t save any money by refilling my old candle jar, but I didn’t lose anything either. Importantly, I was able to support a small, local business that is doing really amazing work for my community and helping to create a cleaner, less wasteful world for us all. I also reused a jar.
AND. The mental health benefit of making this candle can not be understated. I’ve been feeling scroogey lately, and going through the steps to make my candle helped me in ways I probably can’t quite grasp yet. Melting the wax, pouring it, watching it change colour as it solidified, cutting a jaunty angle into the wick…all so pleasing for my soul. I made a thing! I can’t wait to light it during my next bath!
The leftovers
As you can see, there’s a bit of packaging with this refill option in the form of a home-compostable bag and a tiny square of wax paper holding the wick supplies together. Also, the extra part of the wick I cut off. In theory, none of these materials need to end up in the garbage. I have a backyard compost setup, so you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be layering the bag in there to see how it breaks down. The tiny square of wax paper is so small that I will probably lose track of it in the compost. And, the leftover wick might be long enough for another, smaller candle, so I’m going to save it!
If I really wanted to (or if I didn’t have a compost option) I could also probably put the empty bag into what’s known in BC as the “Other Flexible Plastic Packaging” waste stream (“OFPP” for short). This material stream is a catch-all for a wide assortment of packaging, and to the best of my knowledge, its final destination is an engineered fuel plant, where it’s burned.
If you know anything about the zero-waste hierarchy, you will know that engineered fuel schemes are not considered a circular solution, because there will always inherently be a waste byproduct (in this case, toxic ash residues).
“Incineration is a form of Destructive Disposal via combustion or thermal conversion/treatment of discarded materials into ash/slag, syngas, flue gas, fuel, or heat. Incineration includes facilities and processes that may be stationary or mobile, may recover energy from heat or power and may use single or multiple stages. Some forms of incineration may be described as resource recovery, energy recovery, trash to steam, waste to energy, energy from waste, fluidized bed, catalytic cracking, biomass, steam electric power plant (burning waste), pyrolysis, thermolysis, gasification, plasma arc, thermal depolymerization, refuse derived fuel, or chemical processing of plastics to fuel.”
If you want to learn more about this, I strongly encourage you to check out the work of GAIA.
Life and the scale of impact
On the scale of my life and the impact I myself have on this planet, one candle jar and one tiny, compostable bag are infinitesimal. I don’t mean to sound nihilistic here, but me alone refilling my candles is not going to fix things. However!
Zooming out and thinking about the amount of candle votives we must all be collectively throwing away when they’ve burned too low, feels more meaty: there’s something there for us to tackle, together. That’s a lot of wasted wax and containers that could have been diverted and reused, if reusing and refilling candle jars were a more accessible option.
So, back to personal impact: if I can contribute one less candle to the pile, all the better. If I can yammer on about it for 10 minutes on my blog and create conversations about it with you, that’s awesome, too! If we all start refilling our candles, that would be pretty neat. And even if all of us refilling our candles doesn’t make a dent in the tidal wave of waste bearing down on us, it probably makes us feel better to DIY. We – as more fulfilled people – are what this planet needs right now, because then we can show up as our true selves and we’re ready to tackle more of these sticky problems.
How do you feel about refilling candles? Is it something you already do, or something you’d be into doing in the future? Tell me! Let’s wax poetic together! 🕯
