This year has been a big one for Plant Therapy! We’ve harnessed the power of plants and essential oils to give you a wonderfully clean and fresh smelling home. It started with our Defender Multi-Surface Cleaner and Window Cleaner concentrates, then moving to hand soaps and seasonal cleaners, and now we’re bringing you our new All Natural Fruit & Veggie Wash!
All-Natural Fruit & Veggie Wash
You’ve done your grocery shopping, got everything on your list, but you definitely don’t want to eat your produce without giving a thorough cleaning first. Produce can have germs, food born bacteria, dirt, wax that preserves freshness, and grime. This All-Natural Fruit & Veggie wash is a simple solution. It uses the combines all-natural ingredients with essential oils to remove residue and provide you with clean and healthy fruits and veggies.
This fresh, citrusy wash efficiently removes surface residues from all types of fruits and vegetables, rinses clean, and doesn’t leave behind an aftertaste. When paired with a reusable glass bottle, this all-natural concentrate makes 64 oz of wash, helps cut down on the use of single-use plastics, and reduces the environmental impact of your cleaning products.
How to Use
Just like with our Multi-Surface Cleaners and Window Cleaners, this a concentrate. To wash hard fruits and veggies, combine 4 tablespoons of All Natural Fruit & Veggie Wash in a clean, empty 16 fl. oz. spray bottle and fill the rest of the bottle with water. Give the bottle a good shake, spray down your produce, and rub for 30 seconds or until clean. Rinse with water and you’re good to go! Plus, this wash won’t leave an aftertaste on your food.
For leafy greens, grapes, and berries, the process is a little different. Mix 1 teaspoon of concentrate in a gallon of water. Soak fruit and veggies in a large bowl for approximately 5-10 minutes. Once it’s done soaking, rinse well and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Tips & Tricks
- Wait until right before you’re ready to prepare the produce to wash it. Putting freshly washed produce in the fridge may spoil faster. But if you do prefer to wash it right after purchase, make sure it dries completely before refrigeration.
- While you don’t have to wash pre-bagged salad, if you choose to do so, it’s totally okay.
- For heads of lettuce, cut out the core and remove the stems. Once you’ve separated it into leaves, follow the directions for leafy greens and soak it in a bowl for 5-10 minutes.
Meet the Ingredients
As with all of our products, we chose only the best, clean ingredients to use in this All-Natural Fruit & Veggie Wash. You can find a handy table of these ingredients along with their corresponding CAS numbers. But we’ll provide a quick summary of these superstar natural ingredients here:
- Citric Acid: found naturally in most citrus fruits (but especially in lemons and lime), it helps control the acidity and alkalinity of this product.
- Decyl Glucoside: this plant-derived cleaning agent is natural and biodegradable. It helps clean and remove dirt and oil.
- Glycerin: another plant-derived ingredient, glycerin stabilizes foam for better cleaning.
- Grapefruit and Lemon Essential Oils: adds a wonderful and fresh aroma.
- Sodium Citrate: the sodium salt of citric acid, this ingredient helps maintain a stable pH over time.
- Water
The Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen
While washing your fruits and veggies might be a given and a good step towards removing pesticide residue, sometimes buying organic can be the best way to limit your exposure to pesticides. Because even though washing your product goes a long way towards removing pesticides, it will never be 100% effective as some pesticide can be absorbed in the produce itself. Thankfully, the Environmental Working Group (or EWG) releases a report each year with the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15. The Dirty Dozen is the top 12 fruits and veggies that have the highest pesticide residue (even after washing). For the fruits and veggies on this list, it’s worth paying a little extra to buy organic. However, the Clean 15 has very little pesticide residue. If you’re needing to save a little money in your budget, those are the best choices for buying regular over organic.
What’s your favorite cleaning product that have released so far? Let us know in the comments below!
