What is beeswax wrap? Is it eco-friendly?
Beeswax wrap is an eco-friendly alternative to cling film. It’s usually made from cotton cloth brushed with melted beeswax, tree resin, jojoba, and coconut oil.
The wrap is waterproof and breathable, so it’s great to keep food fresh, like bread and vegetables.
It is a reusable wrap, and usually, we can use it for a year. One small note about that, I saw some people introduce how to revive the beeswax wrap at home.
Usually, these wraps are home compostable and biodegradable because of their materials. You can put them into your compost or use even them as a fire starter.
Is beeswax wrap bee-friendly?
I understood that using beeswax wrap reduces single-use waste and compostable. It’s great! But they are coming from bees’ hard work. So, is it really eco friendly?
Honey bees produce beeswax to built comb to keep honey and their young bees. When the honey is collected, we also gather beeswax at the same time. However, after harvesting honey, you only get a small amount of beeswax.
“The normal yield is 1-2 pounds of beeswax per 100 pounds of honey harvested.” (Food 4 Farmers, 2014)
“For each pound of beeswax provided by a honey bee, the bee visits over 30 million flowers. ” (The British Bee Keeper Association)
I found a great blog post from “Dylan Kendall”, who interviewed a local beekeeper who respects bees and doesn’t harvest honey when bees don’t have any extras; it was very insightful. They were talking about honey and beeswax for people on a vegan diet.
After reading some opinions online about using beeswax, it was clear that we should not rely on it as a primary method to store food. It is the same for plastic; people loved it because it’s cheap and light, and it got overused.
I’m going to use the beeswax wrap as “one of” my alternative to clingfilm and try not to let bee work harder because of me!
Speaking of bees, there are some “bee-less” food wraps as well!
I found a blog post with a recipe to make your beeswax wrap and bee-less plant-based wax wrap! That will be my next experiment!
How to use beeswax wrap?
The wrap softens with our hand temperature, and then you can use it just like a cling film. (But don't put in the microwave!)However, you can not wrap raw meat and fish since you can't use hot water to sanitise them. Also, avoid wet food items and something that leaves a stain on it if you want to keep the wrap’s clean look.
Wash only with cold water or with washing liquid with a soft sponge. An environmentally friendly way would be to use ecological soap with a loofa sponge. Rinse well with cold water and wipe it with a clean cloth or hang them to dry.
Another pitfall, be extra careful with temperature when using beeswax wrap as the wax could melt. So when you cover food, make sure it has cooled beforehand.
Beeswax wrap from Verebio (Amazon.fr)
Buy Bee's Wrap set on Amazon.co.uk
Bee's Wrap is an equivalent one on Amazon.co.uk that we’ll try when we’re back in the UK (they also have a larger shape to wrap bread!).
We found Verevio’s beeswax wrap on Amazon.fr when I was buying their reusable cotton bag for shopping veg and fruit; they offered 10% off their beeswax wrap. Since I never used it before, I thought I could give it a try.
They arrived with the cotton bags and some other stuff that my husband ordered. They came in a recyclable paper package, and on the box is a QR code to scan to download their e-book with some tips on reducing waste.
Inside the box, there are four beeswax wrap with a small thank you card (well, it is a written “Merci”). But the paper is special! There are seeds in it! We don’t know what seeds they are since it’s a secret, so you wouldn’t know until you grow them. It’s as exciting as it is scary, though.
The overall wrap texture is smooth, but my hand got some wax on it after handling them, especially when you hold it longer because the wax starts to melt at body temperature.
Smells like...wax? No, in fact, it’s not smelly at all. This wrap is made using french organic sunflower oil, pine resin, organic cotton cloth and organic beeswax produced in France. They are handmade in France and home compostable too!
They came in three different sizes. One is large(36cm x 33cm), two in medium(26cm x 26cm) and one in small(18cm x 20cm)
I tried to wrap three different bowls. One is my favourite large bowl from pyrex, the medium one is the one I use to make creme dessert, and the small one is a bowl for breakfast.
The wrap didn’t stick to the small bowl, perhaps because of the mat texture, but it still covered it well. The large bowl and medium bowl were both correctly wrapped. So I’d say that I’m happy with the results.
After removing the wrap from the bowls, it left some wax on the bowl. But after some research, beeswax wraps will leave some wax until they “cure”, so that is to be expected. The wax comes off when I washed the bowls in the dishwasher. Well, anyway, it’s a food-grade product, so there is no need to worry.
Closing words
All in all, I am pretty happy with the results. As always, I will keep you posted on how it goes and learn more about making better use of these wraps. If you have any questions, advice, or would like to know more about a specific topic, please do let us know on our Instagram, Pinterest or by email here! We’ll answer them in our review! Don't forget to join our email list to be kept up to date!
Buy Bee's Wrap set on Amazon.co.uk
