Students can make their Valentine’s Day not only red-hot, but also green. Here’s how to enjoy alternatives to the run-of-the-mill candles, wine, chocolate and roses with the environment in mind.

A Cleaner Burn

Traditional candles are paraffin-based, which means they are made with petroleum. According to the American Lung Association, burning paraffin candles can contribute to particle pollution in the home.

Jill Camerlinck, sales associate with Waxman Candles, 609 Massachusetts St., said she thought burning soy-based candles was better than burning paraffin candles.

“Whenever you burn paraffin, when you blow the candle out you have the soot that comes off it,” Camerlinck said. “But with the soy, it’s a little puff of smoke but not as much. It’s a much cleaner burn.”

Waxman Candles makes its candles on site in the back of the store. Camerlinck said the process of making soy and paraffin candles is the same, but the smell of the soy is different.

“To me it kind of smells like a doughnut,” Camerlinck said.

Soy candles available at Waxman range from small votives to larger candles, and range in price from $1.75 to $25.

A GREENER Grape

Organic and biodynamic wines can be found at Cork and Barrel, 2000 W. 23rd St. John Smiley, the store’s owner, said biodynamic wine differed from normal organic wine because of the way the grapes were grown. Grapes for organic wine are grown without the use of pesticides.

“For biodynamic wine the fertilizer you use has to be organic that came from a cow that was fed only organic materials,” Smiley said. “Anything that touches the grape has to be organic through a long chain of items.”

Smiley said he didn’t think organic wines were the most popular wine sold at Cork and Barrel, but he said they were definitely growing in popularity. Smiley said the taste of organic and biodynamic wines helped boost their popularity.

“There’s definitely a taste difference,” Smiley said. “A lot of them are softer, with not as much bite.”

Smiley said organic and biodynamic wines were priced similarly to other wines sold at Cork and Barrel and usually sold from $12 to $15 dollars per bottle. Organic wines are available in merlot, cabernet, chardonnay and pinot noir. The biodynamic wine available at Cork and Barrel is called Hedges.

a sweeter planet

According to www.globalexchange.org, a product is certified fair trade if it ensures safe working conditions and adequate living wage for the workers who produce the product. Forced child labor is prohibited, and environmentally sustainable production is required. Au Marche, 931 Massachusetts St., offers three lines of fair-trade chocolate: El Ray, Santander and Malagasy. The Malagasy line has two different bars, the Mora Mora and the Sambirano. Each bar is $7.75. Organic chocolates, made without pesticides, are also available.

Lora Wiley, owner of Au Marche, said the taste of these chocolates was important.

“I have found that it is important to some of our customers to have fair-trade options available, but for the most part we carry these chocolates because of their excellent flavor and quality.” Wiley said.

a rosier earth

The Community Mercantile, 901 Iowa St., has been getting its Valentine’s Day roses from Earth Flowers in Lecompton for the past three years. Earth Flowers grows all its flowers on Henry’s Plant Farm, which is about 10 miles outside of Lawrence.

Jozie Schimke, one of the Earth Flowers growers, said VeriFlora, a sustainability certification program, certified all the flowers she grew. Schimke said the VeriFlora certification ensured good working conditions for workers and emphasized growing flowers in a natural and sustainable way, with little to no use of pesticides. Although the VeriFlora certification does not guarantee that the flowers are certified organic, Schimke said the process was generally pesticide-free.

“All our field flowers are pesticide-free.” Schimke said. “Sometimes we mix up baking soda, water and horticultural oil to kill powdery mildew on plants, but that’s the only thing that would be considered a pesticide.”

Schimke said Earth Flower bouquets and sets of a half-dozen roses would sell for $7.99 to $17.99 at the Merc.

— — Edited by Chris Hickerson