Bid goodbye to chapped lips, the chemical free way!

With winters wearing out and the summer heat setting in, chapped lips are going to become a routine. While the market is flooded with drooling flavours of lip balms, it’s time to stop and do a quick check on what’s it that’s actually going onto those lips.

Most lip balms, including those from famous brands are derived from petrolatum (i.e. petroleum jelly, it forms a key ingredient in most) – an ingredient banned in some parts of the world. Add to that, they are often packed with artificial fragrances and dyes for colouring. Petrolatum or petroleum jelly can also be contaminated with PAHs – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a group of chemicals that are formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage, or other organic substances). In addition to being associated with cancer, PAHs are also known to be toxic to the environment and wildlife as they seep into the water and also pollute the air.

The best alternatives, therefore, are either to scout for chemical free, natural lip balms (look up some here) or if you are up for a small task – then make yourself one at home. DIY lip balm recipes are terribly easy to do and the ingredients are easy to source and of course, since you make it, you know there’s no unwanted chemical in it either.

How to make homemade lip balm

Ingredients needed:

1. Cold pressed Organic Coconut Oil/ Cold Pressed Organic Avocado Oil – 1 tablespoon
2. Organic Shea Butter – 1 teaspoon
3. Beeswax or Soy Wax – 1 tablespoon
4. Essential Oil (optional) – 3 to 4 drops – choose from lavender, vanilla, tea tree, rose, orange
5. Vitamin E (optional) – 1 drop – known to increase the life of the lip balm

Process:

1. Create yourself a makeshift double boiler – take a steel bowl and place it in your saucepan with 1”water. If the steel bowl fits perfectly onto the saucepan, then stick a knife in between the two to ensure the vapour can evaporate easily from the saucepan.
2. Put the water in the saucepan to boil and add the first three ingredients i.e. Cold Pressed Coconut Oil or any other you have chosen), Organic Shea Butter and Beeswax to the bowl set on top of the saucepan. If you’d like your balm to be soft, you could consider adding more oil and if you’d like it to be hard, reduce the oil and add more of the Beeswax.
3. Slowly while stirring continuously, let the three melt completely, avoiding it from reaching a boil.
4. Once done, you could take it off the stove and add the essential oil and Vitamin E to the same.
5. Now transfer these into old tin/ glass bottles you have lying around.
6. Let it cool for at least 3 hours (do resist the temptation to touch it while it cools) and once done, start using it.

Additionally, find below an online tutorial with a slight variation for making Chemical Free Lip Balms:

If you have any varying recipes for making lip balms, do share them with us. We recently read an article in which a naturopath gave tips on how to slowly go green – If you’re looking to go green with your beauty routine she recommends first replacing the essentials that you use almost daily with organic, natural, chemical-free products. Once you have succeeded at that, is when you should slowly start replacing the others. We think that’s a good way to start.

We’re soon going to try and make our own lip balm and we’ll definitely be posting pictures of it. So do look out for it.