🌿 Plant-derived cleaning products, made in the USA since 2012

Just-Add-Water Cleaning Concentrates: How They Work and What They Save

Most spray cleaners are about 95% water. Every bottle of it gets trucked across the country, shelved, bought, sprayed, and thrown away — so you can buy another bottle of mostly water next month.

We think that's a silly way to ship water. Our all-purpose cleaner comes as a concentrate instead: you add the water at home, from your own tap, and the bottle becomes ready to use the moment it's full. One refill pouch makes seven more bottles.

How a cleaning concentrate actually works

A cleaner is surfactants, helpers, and scent dissolved in water. The water doesn't clean anything — it's the delivery vehicle. A concentrate simply holds back the water until the last step.

Ours works like this:

  1. First bottle: your 32 fl oz spray bottle arrives with concentrate inside. Fill it with water, shake, done — now it's a full ready-to-use bottle.
  2. Refills: one 31.5 fl oz refill pouch contains seven more doses of concentrate. Pour a dose in, add water, keep the same bottle and sprayer.
  3. Repeat: the pouch lives under your sink and replaces seven bottles you'd otherwise buy, ship, and toss.

Same plant-derived formula either way — up to 99% plant-derived, scented only with essential oils, no synthetic fragrance, no dyes.

What the math looks like

We measured our own packaging on a scale, because marketing percentages deserve receipts:

  • A 32 fl oz spray bottle with trigger weighs 75.5 g of plastic. The refill pouch that replaces seven of them weighs 25.5 g — that's where the 96% less plastic on the label comes from.
  • A bottle-plus-pouch bundle makes 8 bottles of cleaner for $23.99 — about $3.00 a bottle. Refill pouches alone work out to about $2.99 a bottle.
  • Shipping weight drops the same way the plastic does: seven bottles of water you didn't pay to truck across the country. The carbon story is bigger than the plastic story, and we wrote it up separately.

Tablets vs. sheets vs. liquid concentrate pouches

Concentrated cleaning comes in a few formats now. Honest comparison, tradeoffs included:

Dissolving tablets Sheets / strips Liquid concentrate pouch (ours)
How it works Drop tablet in water, wait for it to dissolve Dissolve a sheet in water Pour, add water, shake
Ready when After the tablet fully dissolves (minutes; residue if it doesn't) After dissolving Immediately after shaking
Works for sprays Yes Mostly hand/dish formats Yes
Scent Usually synthetic fragrance Usually synthetic fragrance Essential oils only
Dose flexibility Fixed per tablet Fixed per sheet Measured pour
Failure mode Partially dissolved tablet clogging the sprayer Sheet residue Pouring, which humanity has mostly mastered

The honest tradeoff on our side: a liquid pouch weighs more to ship than a tablet, and you do the measuring yourself. We accepted both because a liquid dissolves instantly, doesn't clog sprayers, and lets us use real essential oils — tablet formats generally can't carry them well.

The one rule that matters

A concentrate is not ready to use until you add the water. Straight concentrate is stronger than any surface needs and wastes product. Add the water, shake, then clean — counters, range, sink, floors, the whole kitchen if you're on a roll.

Common questions

Does a diluted concentrate clean as well as a store-bought spray? It is the store-bought spray — the only difference is who added the water and where. Concentration at time of use is the same.

How long does a mixed bottle keep? Use a mixed bottle within a few months. The pouch keeps longer because less water means less for microbes to enjoy — one more reason we hold the water back.

Can I use it on stone, wood, or glass? Check the product page for surface guidance — each scent's page lists where it works and where it doesn't.

Do the dish and hand soaps work this way too? Those are full-strength liquids with their own refill pouches (no water-adding step) — the plastic savings logic is the same, up to 85% depending on the product line. How our refill system works →

Try it