FAQs

As you can imagine, we are often asked questions about our products, so here's a few of the more frequently asked questions - along with our answers of course!
Ingredients
"Your list of ingredients sounds long, what on earth does it all mean?"

In the aim of being clear about our ingredients, here’s the low-down:
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Aqua – water!
Helianthus annuus Seed Oil – Sunflower oil.
Butyrospermum parkii - Shea Butter.
Theobroma cacao Seed Butter – Cocoa butter*, ,
Olea europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil – Olive Oil.
Aloe barbadensis Leaf Juice Powder – Aloe Vera,
Linum usitatissimum Seed Oil* Linseed Oil,

The other ingredients are a combination of thickeners and preservatives, where possible they are organic. Then there are the organic essential oils and honey.  It’s all as natural as possible, whilst ensuring your beautiful creams are kept fresh and lovely to apply.

Important. Please note:   Because of the organic ingredients, a graininess may develop in extremes of temperature.  This is purely superficial and does not affect the performance at all.

Avoid contact with eyes, do not ingest. If ingested rise mouth with water and seek medical advice immediately.  If in eyes, rise with warm water until no residue remains and in the event of skin irritation, stop use and rinse with water. If irritation persists seek medical attention immediately.

If you are at all uncertain about using products with essential oils, then please try a patch test, and/or consult a medical practitioner.

Returns and Cancellations

We are very proud of each and every product, and we'll do our utmost to ensure your absolute satisfaction. If you are in any way dissatisfied with our products, then we really want to know about it. So, if you want to return a product, please just call us first to see if there's anything we can help you with, and then you're safe in the knowledge that products may be returned for a full refund or a replacement - whicever you prefer.

You are welcome to cancel an order of less than 5 items, any time before it is shipped.  However once shipped we cannot accept cancellations due to the nature of the product.

Packaging rationale.

At Aethica, we take our carbon footprint seriously and have worked to try to

minimise it wherever possible.

Packaging was a biggie though, so we’ve invested months and months to come to what we deem to be the best solution:  PET or glass depending on the product usage and whether it is to be shipped of not.

And here’s why…

The Glass V Plastic argument is just not clear.  We’ve trawled the internet, phoned top agencies, asked packaging experts and environmental boffins.  But guess what?  There are no utterly clear rules or calculations that give the required information.

Probably like yourself, my initial thoughts were that glass was the best option, but after assessing information from Envirowise, WRAP, the glass associations, the British Plastics Federation… we’ve come to the conclusion that the route we must take needs to be based on other implications than just the carbon footprint and lifecycle analysis of the containers and packaging itself.

For example, Glass is more “sustainable” in that it is not made from oil. Also it is completely recyclable. However it takes tremendous energy to produce in the first instance and one has to be absolutely certain that it will be recycled.  Added to this the cost implications of transporting glass in terms of fuel used for transport.  Using this calculation, glass packaging results in a far higher carbon footprint than plastics!

Plastics are not all created equal.  Many have already a recycled content, and PET1 and HDPE are both recyclable.  The energy costs associated with production of PET1 and HDPE are lower than glass – weight for weight.  But the main carbon saving of using plastics is that the total packaged product weight will be reduced, therefore taking less energy to transport it around.

 And the very final issue is breakages.  Our carefully crafted products are valuable and gorgeous.  So we deem that PET or HDPE choice is less likely to break on their journey to you.

 Where glass IS used…

But, after all that has been said and done, there are certain products containing a higher level of essential oils that simply have to be packaged in glass.  But please be assured that each and every product has been assessed and packaged according to what we believe is best for the environment and to bring you a high quality product.

Transportation packaging

The materials used for transporting the product to you will be based on re-use wherever possible.  And where we cannot re-use packaging, we’re going to use good old popcorn!  (sorry, only for packaging not for eating!).  And we’ve kept outer packaging, boxes, etc, out of the equation.  After all these will just go straight to recycling, so where required, we’ve provided a simple product leaflet.

Please do your bit

We do ask all our customers to please recycle the bottles and jars.  Check with your local council to find out where you can recycle.  Better still re-use them if at all possible.