Making Luscious Lip Balm

As fall is upon us and bringing drier weather, my need for lip balm has increased.  Unfortunately, much like deodorants, the packaging for lip balms is pretty discouraging:

It consists of a lot of plastic and very little lip balm.  In reviewing the commercial formulations, I learn that lip balm is typically made of petroleum based waxes such as petrolatum (aka Vaseline).  Petrolatum is on David Suzuki’s Dirty Dozen list as it is a petroleum derivative- see link here :

Dirty Dozen: 12 Ingredients to Avoid in Cosmetics and 5 Clean Beauty Brands to Try

and hence not a healthy choice.  After a quick internet search, I find a recipe consisting of 3 TBSP coconut oil, 1 TBSP beeswax and 1 TBSP shea butter.  Unfortunately, the only ingredient that I have on hand is coconut oil.  I need to head downtown to locate the other materials.  I end up at Coop Coco (see link here Coop Coco), a local shop that sells all the ingredients needed to produce your own cosmetics, such as lip balm.  I find both beeswax (that I can buy in bulk) and shea butter (in a plastic PETE container that I can recycle).   I already have essential oils from my visit to Noblessence earlier this year.  My starting ingredients in hand :

I start making my lip balm.  It is ridiculously easy.  Add the ingredients into a bowl:

and melt using a pot of boiling water as a “bain marie” on the stovetop:

 

then stirring to get a uniform mixture:

 

The packaging options are two fold:  reuse David’s tea metal containers or the reusable plastic containers purchased from coop Coco:

 

Using a pipette (saved from when our children had medication fed to them via pipettes), I quickly transferred the molten mixture into the tubes and jars:

Done in less than 15 minutes!  I was able to produce quite a lot of lip balm using this formulation:

The only downside was that this lip balm formulation was too soft for me and did not match the texture of the Blistex lip balm.  I tried another formula based on the suggestion from my wonderful chemist friend, Daniela:  1 TSP coconut oil, 1 TSP beeswax and 1 TSP shea butter with 6 drops of spearmint oil.  I was able to produce 2 tubes and a small amount in a metal pot.  This formula is EXACTLY like the Blistex mint lip balm and I love it.

One of the key findings from this experiment:  beeswax is notoriously difficult to clean.  Dedicate a pot or bowl for it or make the lip balm directly in a glass container so that you do not have to clean the pot used.  The jar or pot or bowl can be reused for future manufacturing.  Much easier!  Reduce our waste has to be easy or else no one will continue to do it.

Conclusions from this experiment:

Making lip balm is ridiculously easy!  4 ingredients, no complicated chemicals and a lovely texture.  What’s not to love?    I will definitely make my own lip balm again.

Challenge for the Week:  Do you want to try to make your own lip balm?  It is very simple and avoids a lot of chemicals as well as preventing plastics from going into our waste stream.  Let me know how it works out for you.