When I started making the switch from toxic, chemical-laden cleaners to healthier, natural cleaners, one critical item on my list was a good stain remover. I am forever dripping food on my clothes, or tea, or toothpaste – you get the idea. I’m clumsy. And my husband has yet to find a natural deodorant to suit him, so his T-shirts often have stubborn antiperspirant stains that nothing could remove. I scoured the laundry products at Whole Foods and my eye was drawn to Ecover Stain Remover with a hot pink lid. Like Kerry (we have things in common), good design is an important factor in my personal shopping, and Ecover had that going on, too. Moving on from the eye candy aspect, I opened the bright lid to sniff the scent of lavender and find a nifty stain-scrubbing brush. I tossed the bottle in my shopping basket.
To date, this is honestly the best stain remover I’ve ever used. It works beautifully on crimson Indian and Ethiopian food stains, mud, tea, coffee, wine and whatever I manage to find on my shirt at any given time of day. I merely dampen the stain, squeeze on Ecover Stain Remover, and scrub the stain for thirty seconds to a minute. Then I pop the clothing item in the washer, wash a whole load with Ecover Laundry Wash, and wa-la, the stain is gone!
I also admire that Ecover discloses all of their ingredients right on the bottle:
Plant-based non-ionic and anionic tensio-active surfactants, water, salt, enzymes (guaranteed non-GMO), plant-based ethanol, natural gum, and plant-based fragrance.
All of those ingredients seem pretty clean to me, but question marks popped in my brain over plant-based ethanol and plant-based fragrance. I filled out Ecover’s contact form and asked about this product, but I have not heard back from them yet. Skin Deep gives ethanol a moderate hazard rating of 3-4 and Delicious Organics says that plant-based ethanol (from corn) is a fairly safe choice. It "is usually fermented from sugars and breaks down very rapidly in the environment." As for the plant-based fragrance, from the stain remover’s scent I’d swear up and down it was lavender essential oil, but I’d still like to hear from Ecover to be in the know.
There are definite positives of this product: it works on both light laundry and my husband’s many black T-shirts; it’s "perfect for all grease and protein stains: blood, egg, grass, mud, milk, sweat, ice cream" (that about covers the spectrum of gross to non-gross); the label, bottle, and lid are 100% recyclable; and each of Ecover’s products are safe for all river and marine life. Oh, and none of Ecover’s products are tested on animals, either. Needless to say, if I have to choose between Clorox, Shout wipes, or Ecover Stain Remover, I don’t hesitate to choose Ecover.
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