Plastic-Free Lip Balm
Fall is in full swing and with it comes dry weather. I haven’t bought a lip balm tube, or ChapStick, in a very long time. When my lips are dry I normally rub coconut or sunflower seed oil on them. But recently, I found myself needing something a little extra.
It’s easy to grab a stick of lip balm while in the checkout lane but, they are always in a plastic tube and usually packaged in plastic.
You could easily go through 3 – 4 of these tubes a year. My husband has left these in his pockets when throwing his jeans in the laundry basket and it ends up being a tiny cherry bomb in our dryer. Party foul on so many accounts!
So, here are the options I found to keep your lips happy during the winter without all the extra plastic.
Lip Balm in Metal Tins
The first option is lip balm in metal tins. These tins last a while since they have more than 2 – 4 times the amount of lip balm compared to the stick version. That also means they cost 2 – 4 times more than the stick versions. Keep this in mind so you don’t get deterred by the price.
In rating lip balms, there were a few criteria I looked at:
- Ingredients
- Availability
- Packaging
Here’s what I found.
BEST OVERALL
Of all the metal tin options, I found that LUSH’s Honey Trap Lip Balm was the best overall. (No surprise here, I’m a huge fan of LUSH!)
- Ingredients: this lip balm is made from Shea butter and various organic oils.
- Availability: I was able to purchase it at a local LUSH store but you can buy them online as well.
- Packaging: while the container says it is recyclable, the tin is not 100% metal as there’s a waxy plastic-feeling liner on the top of the lip.
The LUSH tins come with 0.4 oz of lip balm whereas a regular ChapStick usually contains 0.15 oz. It has a more solid consistency than a regular Chapstick tube.
Full Ingredients List: fair trade shea butter, almond oil, beeswax, honey, organic extra virgin olive oil, vegan white chocolate, glycerine, fragrance, organic cold pressed wheatgerm oil, oatmeal, peppermint oil, vanilla absolute, sweet wild orange oil, anise alcohol, benzyl alcohol, limonene, linalool, alpha-isomethyl Ionone.
BEST INGREDIENTS
For the best ingredients, Burt’s Bees has a lip balm tin with a minimal amount of ingredients. Like my food, I like my lip balm to a have as few ingredients as possible and preferably ingredients I can pronounce.
- Ingredients: this lip balm is mainly beeswax and various oils and has a shorter ingredient list than LUSH
- Availability: I could not find this lip balm among the assortment of Burt’s Bees products at Target but it is available on Amazon.
- Packaging: The tins are 100% metal and can be recycled.
Full Ingredients List: beeswax, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, peppermint oil, lanolin, tocopherol, rosemary leaf extract, soybean oil and canola oil.
Tocopherol is a form of Vitamin E and lanolin is a wax secreted by wool-bearing animals. The waterproofing properties of lanolin help sheep to maintain water in their coats.
(Please note that as an Amazon associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. It helps cover the cost of blogging.)
BEST PACKAGING
I think these tins from Smith’s are beautiful! This strawberry lip balm tastes like a Starburst candy on your lips and it smells like strawberry heaven.
- Ingredients: The only potential downside is that it has petrolatum, also known as petroleum jelly or generic Vaseline. Petrolatum is derived from petroleum and is a by-product of oil drilling. When fully refined, petrolatum has no proven negative health effects and is commonly used in moisturizers, lip balm, and other cosmetic products.
- Availability: I found these at Sephora and they are also available online on Amazon.
- Packaging: The tin is 100% metal but it does come with a thin plastic shrink wrap film around the circumference of the tin.
These tins come with 0.8 oz of lip balm. A regular ChapStick comes with 0.15oz. Smith’s lip balm has a smoother consistency similar to Vaseline.
Full Ingredients List: petrolatum, lanolin, white beeswax and trade secret strawberry perfume flavor.
Smith’s also has a minted rose version that makes your lips tingle, similar to Soft Lips chapsticks that were so popular in the 1990s. Anyone else remember Soft Lips?
Full Ingredients List: petrolatum, peppermint oil, cotton seed oil, and trade secret perfume premix.
DIY Lip Balm
There are many recipes for DIY lip balm. Instead of buying tins to make your own lip balm, I would buy a small Altoids tin and reuse that instead.
The simplest lip balm recipe I found was from Going Zero Waste.
- 3 Tablespoons grated cocoa butter
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
Melt the cocoa butter in a double boiler and stir in olive oil. Pour into a clean and empty Altoids tin and let cool overnight.
- Ingredients: Two ingredients and you can control them!
- Availability: You find cocoa butter in health food stores and online and buy olive oil in any grocery store.
- Packaging: I know cocoa butter is available package free at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco but I haven’t gotten a chance to run by the store. I also haven’t been able to find any manufacturer that sells cocoa butter in glass jars instead of a plastic jar or bag. So, there’s a trade off if you can’t find cocoa butter in bulk.
What do you think? Can you switch from a plastic lip balm tube to a metal or DIY option? Leave me a comment and tell me which one you’d try!
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