Our perfumes are made from only natural (and by “natural” we mean plant derived) ingredients, but are not 100% organic, or organically certified. We often hear the words natural and organic used interchangeably and thought we’d set things straight…

All “organic” ingredients are natural, but not all natural ingredients are “organic”. For an ingredient to be labelled as organic, it must have a certificate to show that it has been produced in an organic way (at its simplest, this means without the use of chemicals).

At Abel, we are firm believers in organic production methods – it’s better for the environment, the people involved in the process and ultimately the end consumer. In fact our utopia wouldn’t need organic certification systems, because everything would be grown organically. However, there are two main reasons why we don’t work exclusively with organically certified ingredients (although all our perfume is at least 80% organic by volume):

1. We want to use the very best natural ingredients. For example, the cedarwood used in Green Cedar, we source from the Atlas mountains in Morocco is not certified organic because it grows wild and is harvested and processed locally without the resources or access to organic certification.

2. We want to use the best of natural science. For example, we use a musk compound derived from the ambrette seed (the seed inside the hibiscus flower, you can read more about this here). This musk compound makes our perfume last longer and be more ‘perfume like’. The compound is 100% renewable, but is not organically certified.

For us it’s about making the best natural perfume possible, so we’ll use the absolute best natural ingredients we can get our hands on.