Status: 09.01.2024, 14:06 PM
By: Anne Hund
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Do you still have a few tea lights at home? If the wax is ice-cold, this could affect the burning time of the candles.
There are different tea lights with different burn times. The sustainability portal Utopia points out that you can use a trick with certain tea lights: by putting them in the freezer before use and letting them "freeze well", as it says on Utopia.de. This could extend the burning time of the candles by "one to two hours" if necessary. Because, according to the report: "The reason for this is that the candle flame first has to reheat frozen wax. The wax of most conventional tealights consists of hard paraffin, which melts at temperatures between 50 and 80 degrees. If the wax is ice-cold, it takes longer to reach this melting point."
Tealights can provide small rays of hope, at least temporarily. (Symbolic image) © Zoonar.com/stockfotos-mg/Imago
Dispose of used tealights correctly
How should you dispose of used tea lights? The aluminium cover belongs in the yellow bag and not in the residual waste, informs the magazine Öko-Test – so that the material can enter the recycling cycle. Tea lights are increasingly being offered on the market without disposable aluminium covers, Oekotest.de also reports. A sustainable substitute for the aluminium cover is "reusable tealight holders made of glass, stainless steel or compostable materials", as it says there, among other things. "For these tealight holders, you can buy refill tealights (without cover)," is the tip according to Öko-Test.
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Recycle used tealights
According to Oekotest.de, if you want to cast new candles from old candle leftovers, you can also use the aluminum cover of tea lights as small pouring molds (or alternatively, for example, small yoghurt cups). In addition to wax residues and the casting moulds, you will also need a wick cord. So you can pour the candles yourself, as it goes on to say: The candle residues are melted in a water bath and then the liquid wax is poured through a sieve into the mold, the wick string is dipped and the homemade candles are allowed to dry. "If you attach the wick with a clothespin to a thin branch positioned transversely above the candle mold, it will not tip to the side in the liquid wax," it also says on Oekotest.de.