Earth Day Every Day: The Story of Sustainably Harvested Botanicals at Sunsum®

Earth Day is April 22nd. For most brands, that date is a marketing window. For Sunsum®, it is an annual reminder of the sourcing commitments that shape the botanical line every other day of the year.

This is what those commitments actually look like.

The Botanical Sourcing Philosophy

Every botanical in the Sunsum® line — every smudge stick, every palo santo bundle, every floral wand, every bag of potpourri — starts with a material decision. Where was this plant grown? How was it harvested? Who did the harvesting, and under what conditions? What is left behind after it leaves?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the actual criteria that determine whether a botanical enters the Sunsum® line. The short version: sustainably harvested, small-batch, handmade. The longer version is the one worth telling.

Palo Santo: Why Source Matters

Palo Santo (Bursera graveolens) is one of the most sought-after aromatic woods in the world, which makes its sourcing one of the most consequential choices in the botanical industry. Unsustainably harvested palo santo — cut from living trees, cleared from habitat — is widely available and significantly cheaper. We don’t source it.

Our palo santo is harvested from naturally fallen trees only, following the traditional Ecuadorian and Peruvian harvesting practice that allows the wood to cure in the forest for years before collection. The aromatic compounds that make palo santo smell the way it does — the warm, resinous, slightly citrus-forward scent — develop during this curing process. Sustainably harvested palo santo smells better because it is older, more complete, more fully itself. The ecology and the quality are aligned, not in tension.

The Smudge Stick Sourcing Standard

Our white sage smudge sticks are sourced from cultivated white sage (Salvia apiana) grown outside of the wild coastal sage scrub habitat where wild harvesting has created documented ecological pressure. White sage is a keystone plant in Southern California’s coastal scrub ecosystems — it supports pollinators, provides habitat structure, and holds soil on slopes. Cultivated sourcing removes harvest pressure from wild populations while supporting small agricultural operations.

Copal, the secondary aromatic in our smudge sticks, is sustainably harvested from Bursera species in Mexico and Central America using traditional tapping methods that do not harm the tree.

Earth Day Every Day

The phrase “Earth Day every day” is easy to say and hard to operationalize. What it means in practice, for a handmade botanical brand, is making sourcing decisions that are correct regardless of whether anyone is paying attention. The choices that matter are the ones made in January, not the ones announced in April.

Explore the full Botanicals Collection.