- Home
- Ethical sourcing
Ethical sourcing
Every ingredient comes from someone we could call on the phone.
And have. A candle is only five or six things. We think a small company ought to know where all of them come from, who made them, and whether those people were paid properly. So we do, and they were.
What goes in the glass
Six ingredients, named.
Soy wax
Story County, Iowa
Lindqvist Family Farms
Non-GMO soybeans grown on 640 acres outside Ames, rotated with corn and oats, and pressed and hydrogenated at a cooperative mill in central Illinois. We visit every other August. Dale Lindqvist has asked us to stop referring to it as “our soy.” We are working on it.
Beeswax
Sonoma & Marin counties
Ferreira Apiary, Bodega Bee Co., Nicasio Hives
Cappings only, the thin wax seal a beekeeper removes to harvest honey, so no hive is disturbed on our account. We pay roughly forty percent above the commodity price and fund a strip of native wildflower forage at each apiary every spring.
Cotton wick
Gastonia, North Carolina
Carolina Braid & Wick
Organic, unbleached cotton braided by a family mill that has made wick since 1946. Lead-free and zinc-free. Every wick is primed in our own wax before it goes into a glass.
Fragrance
Grasse, France & Oakland, California
Two independent perfumers
Phthalate-free blends, IFRA compliant, built around natural essential oils and absolutes wherever they hold up in wax, and an honest note on the label where they don’t.
Cocoa & vanilla
Ashanti, Ghana & Sava, Madagascar
Fairtrade cooperative · direct-trade growers
For Brownies & Ice Cream. Cocoa absolute from a Fairtrade cooperative of about 1,400 growers; vanilla bought directly from growers, who are paid before the harvest rather than after it.
Glass
Southeastern Ohio
A fourth-generation family glassworks
Pressed glass made to be washed, refilled, and used again. We take every Hale & Wick glass back at the counter, cleaned or not, for a $4 credit.
Our commitments
What we promise, in writing.
Fair pay, all the way back. We pay every supplier at or above fair-trade or living-wage benchmarks, and we ask to see how that money reaches the people doing the work.
Fair pay at the shop. Everyone on our staff earns at least the San Francisco living wage, reviewed every January, plus health coverage from their first day. The dog is paid in biscuits, which we have checked is standard.
No paraffin. Not in a blend, not in a pinch, not that one time in 2016 when a supplier suggested it would be cheaper. It would have been.
No testing on animals. Our candles are tested on staff, who are compensated and, by the end of the Brownies & Ice Cream trials, somewhat heavier.
2025 sourcing report · Summary
- 100% of ingredients traceable to a named source
- 9 of 9 suppliers visited in person in the last two years
- ≈ 1.2 million bees covered by our 2024 beeswax audit
- 0 bees interviewed
The full report, including supplier names, prices paid, and visit notes, is printed and kept at the counter beside the snuffers. You are welcome to read it there. Martin will be glad to walk you through it, at length.
Carbon
A candle, when lit, releases the carbon it contains. We have looked into this thoroughly and there is no way around it. We offset our deliveries and supplier travel through a forest project in Mendocino County, and we encourage you to burn your candle slowly.
Packaging
Boxes are recycled kraft board from Stockton. Padding is our own shredded office paper, which for a while in 2021 included our tax returns. Our accountant has asked us to stop, and we have.
Empties
Since 2014, customers have returned 11,204 Hale & Wick glasses for refill or reuse. Also one fish bowl, which was not ours. We have accepted it into the program as a matter of policy.
“Bees are the only suppliers I’ve worked with who have never missed a delivery and have never once returned a phone call.”
Martin Wick, co-founder
Each summer Martin visits our apiaries with a clipboard he has been repeatedly told is unnecessary. You can read his notes from this year’s visit to Two Rock in the journal.