The human and environmental cost of essential oils in candles

Essential oils—so pure, so lovely, so... complicated. What the wellness industry doesn’t like to talk about is the massive environmental and human cost of producing these little bottles of “natural” bliss.

Did you know it takes 10,000 pounds of rose petals to make just one pound of rose oil? That’s an enormous amount of plant material for a relatively small yield. And we haven’t even touched on the human element yet. Many of the workers who harvest these materials are underpaid and work in dangerous conditions.

Take the jasmine industry, for example. In Egypt, jasmine pickers are paid a pittance for their labor—just $1.50 a day, if they’re lucky. Meanwhile, the perfumes made from these flowers retail for hundreds of dollars. It’s a stark reminder that the price of your fragrance goes beyond what’s on the label.

At No Common Scents, we believe in doing things the right way. That’s why we use a blend of high-quality synthetic and natural fragrances, ensuring that our products are both luxurious and ethical. We’re not here to exploit the planet or the people on it—just to bring you incredible scents that don’t cost the Earth.

So the next time you light one of our candles, you can rest easy knowing that we’ve done the research to create a product that’s good for you, good for the planet, and good for the people who help make it.