Lip Butter Face-Off: Burt's Bees & Solana

We're happy to showcase the first installment of Daria Baker's ingredient deep dive. Daria is a UTK student majoring in nutrition and double minoring in environmental studies and public health. For a school project, she's taking a closer look at the ingredients found in some of your favorite KnoxFill products and comparing them to other alternatives. 

I personally can’t go anywhere without my lip balm - I risk the chance of an endless day/night of feeling like my lips will fall off from the constant licking, even though it only makes things worse. I personally have been using Burt’s Bees as my go-to lip balm, so I thought that it would only make sense that I put it head-to-head against the one offered at KnoxFill. 

I was pleasantly surprised that the lip balm currently in my pocket did hold its own overall, but it does fall short on a few ingredients and on packaging. Solana’s vegan lip butters are made with certified organic ingredients rated at EWG (Environmental Working Group) 1 and 2 and come in a compostable tube. I don’t know about you, but hearing that something is in compostable packaging just makes me want to try it out even more. Burt’s Bees does offer a mail-in program through Terracycle to compost their tubes, but the lack of recycling infrastructure here locally has me thinking that maybe I'll have to find a new favorite lip balm. 

In addition to clean ingredients and thoughtful low waste packaging, Solana lip butter is made in Knoxville and woman-owned. Personally, I like supporting local, women-owned companies because you know where and who is actually making your product, you get to keep your hard-earned money within our community (and help build up Knoxville to be the best region it can be!), and you are supporting local makers and business owners (rather than helping pay for some corporate person’s third home or boat . . .) Burt’s Bees, in contrast, is owned by the Clorox Company, a defendant in a lawsuit aimed at some of the biggest plastic polluters. 

Our lips are more sensitive and susceptible to drying out than the rest of the skin on your body, and it’s important that they’re well protected from the elements. We know that choosing an effective lip balm or butter can take some trial and error - and we encourage you to check out Solana next time your favorite lip product runs out! Keep reading to see a deep dive of the ingredients in each product, the function they serve, and their EWG rating. 

Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm

Ingredients: cera alba (beeswax, cire d'abeille), cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, helianthus annuus (sunflower) seed oil, mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, lanolin, tocopherol rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf extract, glycine soja (soybean) oil, canola oil (huile de colza), limonene.

Packaging and end of life: The package is not recyclable curbside, however, they do offer a free TerraCycle mail-back program.

Solana Simply Eco Lip Butter                  

Ingredients: Carnauba wax*, castor oil*, sunflower seed oil*, mango seed butter*, coconut oil*, and organic flavor oil.*

*Certified organic ingredient 

Packaging and end of life: this lip butter comes in a compostable paper tube. Simply get all that good lip butter out at the end and then toss it in your compost bin.