Why candle refills matter.

One jar. A lifetime of scents.

One jar, refilled over and over again, instead of a brand new one every time. No more disposable candle culture.

We want candle refills to be the norm, and far fewer jars ending up in landfill. And we want to help people understand the damage candle jars can do to our UK recycling system, because most of us simply don't know.

Six years in, it's lovely to see more candle refills popping up. But they're still not the standard, and that's the problem. We still have a long way to go in our mission to change the candle industry.

The UK candle industry is worth an estimated £1.9 billion. That's a lot of candles, and a lot of jars.

So think about it. How many candles do you burn in a year? How many jars have you thrown away?

Now walk into any homeware or department store and look at the shelves. Candle after candle after candle, every one of them in a jar. Then picture where all those jars end up.

That's one store, on one day.

When I set up the candle company, I was making candles, packing candles and sending out candles. And as the business grew, so did the sheer number of glass jars going out of the door.

We'd always prided ourselves on being eco friendly and thinking about our footprint. But I couldn't shake the feeling. Did every jar really need to be used, thrown in the bin, and replaced with another one, with all the packaging and extra cost that comes with it?

There had to be an alternative. So in May 2020, we launched candle refills. The first candle company in the UK to do it.

Refills came first, because of the waste. What I found out a year later made them matter even more.

About a year after we launched refills, I was on a night out with one of my girls. I broke a wine glass and went to pop it in the recycling bin.

She told me off. You can't put wine glasses in the recycling! Of course you can, I said. It's glass. All glass goes in.

Nope. Not Pyrex, not light bulbs, not drinking glasses. “Basically, if it goes in your dishwasher, babe, it can't go in your recycling bin.” It's heat treated.

And I had (excuse the pun) a light bulb moment. Does that mean candle jars too?

Neither of us knew, so we googled it. It took about three hours of digging to find the answer.

From that night on, I was set on getting this out there. So many of us think we're doing good by putting our candle jars in the recycling, without realising we're adding to the problem.