Fragrance is a dirty word.
"Parfum" too.
Like "artificial flavors". The movement to take artificial dyes out of our children's food has gathered so much momentum in the last few years. Now it's fragrance's turn.
How is fragrance regulated? (spoiler alert: it's not)
Did you know that there are more than 3,500 fragrance chemicals in use today? And that companies are not required to disclose which specific individual ingredients are in their product, because it's a trade secret? Some fragrance ingredients are a combination of hundreds of different synthetic chemicals. And so there's just no way of knowing what your laundry detergent contains, or your facial moisturizer, or your deodorant, or your reed diffuser or room spray.
The average US adult uses 12 personal care products a day. So most people are exposed to fragrance every time they are washing their hair, face, hands, clothes...
But thank goodness our personal care products are regulated. By the FDA. So no sweat, right?
Wrong. Personal care products are regulated, yes. But the chemicals in the fragrance mixes in our personal care products are not required to go through an FDA review before being put into use.
And you would think that because they aren't regulated, there can't be any danger. Wrong again. Phthalates can harm the reproductive system. Styrene, another fragrance chemical, has been linked to cancer. Formaldehyde, listed on many a reed diffuser label, has been found to be carcinogenic to humans. And that's the potential impact of exposure to our bodies - VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, can cause ozone pollution.
This should be scary. Fragrance is all around us. Silently eroding our health and the health of the only planet we have to live on.
Taking on fragrance is a daunting task. Combatting our vast exposure to synthetic chemicals found in fragrance is no small feat.
How are our scents made, if they're not synthetic or secret?
The first step for us to take was a logical one. Go back in time. Historically, essential oils were extracted using a method called steam distillation or in the case of citrus, through cold-pressing. As industrialization picked up, the process was refined and "improved" to make it faster and cheaper. The most popular extraction technique that accounts for the overwhelming majority of essential oils is called solvent-based extraction, where the solvent is a known petrochemical neurotoxin called hexane. Because hexane is used for extraction purposes only, it is not required to be listed as an ingredient. Even when there are small amounts that leach into the extracted essential oil (which it always does). But there are still people making essential oils the old fashioned way, using steam, mechanical presses, and time and care.
We meticulously source our organically cultivated or wild-harvested floral and herbal ingredients before they are steam-distilled to form the highest quality essential oil blends. When finessing our organic scentscapes, we selected ingredients that were grown close to where they are extracted and didn't travel too far. So that our scents were safe and fresh for you to enjoy and didn't come at the expense of the environment.
The only ingredient of ours that cannot be extracted through steam distillation or cold pressing is Jasmine essential oil. To extract it, we use a process called Super-critical CO2 extraction, which uses nothing but carbon dioxide in its supercritical state to extract the Jasmine essential oil. The carbon dioxide is never released into the atmosphere and is reused again and again. This technique is favored for its green and clean properties, as it produces high-quality, solvent-free extracts without the use of harsh organic solvents (such as hexane).