Well, on the face of it, nothing, if you just want to make your home or workspace smell nice.
You can pick up a bottle of rose fragrance oil for a couple of pounds, add a few drops to your candle, light bulb ring or oil diffuser, and your room will be filled with - well, that depends on the price you pay, the brand, the ingenuity of the chemists to make up your synthetic fragrance oil that is supposed to smell like the real thing, in our example, a field full of roses.
Many people don’t realise that the term ‘fragrance oil’ means ‘synthetic oil’. Quality will vary tremendously and some will, indeed, fool your nose into thinking you’re smelling the real flower.
So if it’s smell you want, what’s wrong with that?
Many of the constituent chemicals used in fragrance oils are not exactly environmentally friendly. Added to that, some of the chemicals used may have harmful effects to your health. But I’m not going to scare you: You pays your money and makes your choice as they say.
But wait! “Does that mean there’s a better alternative?” you ask.
Yes indeed! The alternative is the real thing, from which all these imitation fragrance oils or their origins in the quest for capturing that perfect rose smell.
Essential oils are the true essence of the plant from which they are extracted. For essence substitute spirit or life force if you like that idea. But in any case, the volatile substances given off by plants in all their forms not only smell heavenly but have healing or other benefits too.
So what’s the catch?
Well, I think you’ve guessed it by now. The cost.
It takes about 1000 kg of rose petals to make a kilo of pure rose essential oil. Just think how many roses that means…
Even for lemons, it takes about 3000 lemons to produce a kilo of essential oil, so you may now begin to understand why candles, oil blends, reed diffusers and other home fragrancing products are so much more expensive.
But what are the known and reputed benefits of essential oils?
Well, to take the lemon first. Lemon juice is a lovely cleaning agent, and the essential oil is a powerful anti-oxidant which helps cleanse and stimulate the blood, as well as being useful for getting rid of too much oil in the skin. It is also an effective detoxifier for the body as a whole
As for the rose, it is not only healing for many bodily ailments but is a wonderful mood lifter and has been used for millennia as an aphrodisiac.
There’s one more factor to add to the cost of essential oils but which, too, has benefits. Much of the world’s production is now based on huge quantities to satisfy the demand from many industries, including food and flavourings. Intensive farming methods mean a high use of pesticides which can leave traces in the essential oils the consumer buys.
To be absolutely sure you are buying the purest essential oil possible, you have to buy organic. Much of this oil is produced on a smaller scale by companies with concerns about the long-term effects of intensive farming on the environment and the food chain. In my view, the extra cost for peace of mind is worth it.
Yes, there are fragrances you just can’t get from essential oils, like fresh-baked bread or apple pie; and there are some that are extremely expensive, like rose and vanilla. But I hope you now understand why the cheap bottle of fragrance oil on the shelf in the discount store or offered online is not actually quite what it seems.
All of our products on Essentially Natural use only the purest, organic essential oils so you can be sure you are buying the best available!
