If you ever search “incense stick” on Google, you’ll get hundreds of results and they all look similar yet different. There are ones with or without a small stick at the end, They have surfaces in brown, black or some bright colors. There are categories like charcoal, Indian, Nepali, Japanese and Chinese…

For anyone who have never used incense stick before, it is so easy to get lost and end up randomly picking. Whether it’s the first that shows up in the search result list, or one of the options that appeals the most to one’s eyes…

If you ever imagine using an incense stick: lighting it up with a match or a lighter, blowing out the flame at the end, and watch it slowing burns down into ashes, it is obvious that the experiences relies on the molecules that’ll go into your body as the air flows.

For anything that we consume (even not through our mouth), the ground rule for recommendation is always that it’s safe to use and will not harm one’s body or the beloved fluffy friends at home. Therefore, the type of incense stick that can fulfill such requirement is always those with natural ingredients.

Key characteristics of natural incense sticks

Looking at the different aspects of incense sticks, here’s a mini checklist that makes a natural incense stick:

Color:

Usually in different shades of yellow-ish brown. The core ingredient of incense sticks is sticky powder, which has a brown color and is the must-have that sticks everything together as its name.

The scents comes from powder of wood or flower, as well as liquid ingredients like flower infused water or honey, and such powder could bring some different color to the brown sticky powder base, but ultimately it should not change the color drastically.

Those pretty and bright colored incense sticks does have an outer surface painted, usually with some chemicals involved.

Scent:

Can you easily understand what the scent is about with the name? If the name is of a single or multiple ingredient, I bet you can easily understand if the incense is of sandalwood, cedar or osmanthus.

But if the name is quite atmospheric like “after rain” or “by the fireside” (no offense to any product of the same name), you can probably imagine that the help of multiple, even artificial ingredients are needed to create such complex sensory experiences.

The common way of making is infuse with essential oil, but certain chemicals can be involved as well depending on the manufacturing process.

I won’t say that such incense are not enjoyable, but the scent can usually be strong and occupies the whole space, while natural incense sticks are much more subtle and easy to enjoy.

If you’re someone who loves nature and would like to be environmentally mindful when purchasing, natural incense sticks will be your best friend.

Ash:

The ash should be safe to touch (no burning on the finger tips) and easily breaks apart. Burning is a practice common since the agricultural era, and the ashes are used to fertile the ground as the things burnt are usually natural plants or crop. It is easy to understand that anything made of natural materials burns down to ashes that is not harmful, while chemical products (think about plastic) burns into weird residuals that carries awful smell and is not safe to touch.

As incense sticks creates memories through scent, it is important that such sensory experience are easy to embark on and leaves no harm to those who want to enjoy it. Natural incense stick is not only a piece of nature captured in the form of sticks, but also a period of relaxing time to release through flame at any time. What comes from nature goes back to nature, just like how time brings everything from life to death.