Choice of Transparent Bottles for our Essential Oils
Choice of Transparent Bottles for our Essential Oils

Historically, essential oils have been a fundamental raw material in the perfume industry. Their quality is based on fragrance but also on two organoleptic criteria: density and color. For this reason, essential oils used in perfumery are stored in transparent glass bottles.

On the other hand, essential oils have therapeutic properties. They have been used by apothecaries and, more recently, by pharmacies in their preparations. They are used in the production of syrups, ointments for skin care, suppositories, among others. Like all raw materials used in pharmaceutical preparations, essential oils were usually stored in colored glass bottles, generally blue, dark green, or brown.

Towards the mid-20th century, essential oils began to be widely used by the pharmaceutical industry. In the 1980s, a new use for essential oils emerged called aromatherapy. Essential oils began to be marketed in pharmacies and health food stores in individual small containers, usually in brown glass bottles.

This wider marketing led to the implementation of marketing strategies adapted to the sale of essential oils: small containers ranging from 5 ml to 15 ml in brown glass bottles. Laboratories defined quality criteria, mainly of a biochemical nature, implemented specific analysis reports, books, and courses on the subject. Thus, the color of the essential oil, its viscosity, and the finesse of its aroma were overshadowed by its biochemical aspect.
   

However, the aroma and color of the essential oil remain two fundamental criteria inherent to this material, whose original specificity is dual: "energy and matter." Therefore, while the biochemical profile remains essential to understanding the properties of an essential oil, its aroma, color, and consistency give it its complete quality, which is primarily vibrational.

The decision to store all essential oils in brown glass bottles was based on the assumption that light would affect the quality of the essential oils. This assumption was based on the observation that citrus essences (lemon, mandarin, grapefruit), which are obtained by cold expression of the peel and are not distilled, polymerize and form a white deposit at the bottom of the bottle. This polymerization, which is easily demonstrable, is not due to the effect of light but to the formation of mucilages in the container. Filtration allows the removal of mucilages, thus preventing polymerization. From a comparative experience, the polymerization phenomenon of citrus oils stored in aluminum bottles, which are completely opaque, occurs in the same way.

Essential oils are photochemically inactive in the visible light spectrum and reactive in the ultraviolet. Ultraviolet light, with sufficient energy to cause photochemical reactions, is absorbed (not transmitted) through common glass. Therefore, the color of the glass container makes no difference, regardless of what it is. Amber glass manufacturers will say that amber is the best, green glass manufacturers will say that green is the best, and so on.

On the other hand, the quality of the container influences the quality of the fragrance of the essential oil. Numerous tests show that brown glass bottles reduce the olfactory spectrum, while transparent bottles allow the full expression of their fragrance precisely due to the vibrational resonance effect with natural light.