Photo: hands being moisturised. This generic photograph shows a tube, not a solid hand balm. Moose Photos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A solid hand balm is hand cream with the water left out. Butters and oils are melted together with a wax, then poured into a tin or pressed into a bar, and the wax is what holds the mixture solid at room temperature. In most balms that wax is beeswax. For anyone buying vegan, or avoiding animal-derived ingredients for other reasons, the practical question is what has been used in its place.
Two plant waxes are named on the three British product pages below: candelilla and sunflower seed wax. They are not the only options, and not every beeswax-free balm uses candelilla, but they are the two actually listed here. Both behave differently from beeswax in a formula, which is worth knowing before paying £8.99 or £17.99 for something that lasts months.
What candelilla and sunflower wax do in a balm
Candelilla wax comes from Euphorbia cerifera, a shrub of northern Mexico and the south-western United States. The plant carries a waxy coating on its stems that slows water loss in dry heat, and that coating is boiled off and refined. On ingredient lists it appears as Euphorbia cerifera. It is harder than beeswax, so formulators generally need less of it to set a balm to the same firmness.
Sunflower seed wax, listed as Helianthus Annuus Seed Cera, is separated out of sunflower seed oil during refining. It is the wax used in the Earth Conscious tin below, alongside sunflower seed oil itself, and it is common in unfragranced formulas and products aimed at babies and sensitive skin.
Neither wax soaks in. A balm sits on the surface while the oils and butters underneath do the softening, the same principle behind the thicker natural body balms people reach for in winter. It is also why a waterless balm feels so different from a pump bottle, where water does much of the work and is held in an emulsion. For a lighter texture, natural body lotions for dry winter skin are a different proposition.
Three beeswax-free solid balms and what is in them
ClimbCare Vegan Hand Balm for Climbers is listed at £11.95 for a 29 to 30g tin, handmade in the UK, water-free and vegan. ClimbCare says it was created by a GB paraclimber and designed for hands worked hard by chalk and rock. The ingredients are mango butter, shea butter, hemp seed oil, jojoba seed oil, candelilla wax and arrowroot powder, with lavender, frankincense and helichrysum essential oils. The brand describes the wax this way: “Candelilla wax creates a light protective barrier that helps lock in hydration while still allowing your skin to breathe”. That is the maker’s own description of the formula, not a clinical finding. ClimbCare also says the balm is designed to absorb well when used sparingly. Availability on the site has varied, so check the page before ordering.
Blanka Magic Hand Balm is a solid bar rather than a soft balm in a tin, 75g for £17.99, suitable for vegans, free of palm oil and packed in cardboard rather than plastic. It is made in Brighton and sold in three scents: lavender, bergamot and vetiver; mandarin and cedarwood; or Scottish pine, rosemary and cedarwood. Blanka describes it as a bar that melts into a “non-sticky lotion in your hands”, and says the waterless formula is concentrated enough that one bar lasts as long as approximately three tubes of regular hand moisturiser. The product page does not set out a full ingredient list, so the wax it uses is not identified there. Anyone avoiding a particular wax should ask the brand before ordering.
Earth Conscious Baby Balm is £8.99 for a 60g aluminium tin and is sold as a baby balm and nappy cream rather than as a dedicated hand product. It belongs here because its wax is sunflower seed wax, and because the brand lists “Dry hands and chapped skin” among the uses it suggests for the rest of the family. The tin also contains organic virgin coconut oil, shea butter, almond oil and apricot kernel oil, with vitamin E and sunflower seed oil. The packaging is plastic-free, and Earth Conscious says the tin is reusable, infinitely recyclable and suitable for kerbside recycling. The same page states: “This is not a medical product.” It advises against use on broken skin and recommends a patch test.
What to check before buying
Look for the wax by its INCI name. Cera alba is beeswax, Euphorbia cerifera is candelilla and Helianthus Annuus Seed Cera is sunflower. A product described as natural or plant-based is not automatically beeswax-free, and a brand that leaves the full list off its product page cannot be assessed from the outside.
Match the format to how it will be used. A bar travels tidily and usually arrives in cardboard. A tin of softer balm is easier to take up on a fingertip and easier to share with cuticles, elbows and lips. Both are water-free and therefore concentrated, so a very small amount goes further than expected, and overapplying is the usual reason a balm ends up feeling greasy.
Weight is the honest way to compare prices. At 29 to 30g, 60g and 75g, the three above are different sizes, and the cheapest pot is not always the cheapest per gram. Then there is the packaging. A tin or a cardboard sleeve takes a plastic tube out of the bathroom, the same reasoning that sent many people towards shampoo bars for dry winter hair, and an aluminium tin can be refilled or recycled once the balm runs out.
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