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I would like to be able to zest more of the citrus I buy and in the UK we can get waxed and unwaxed lemons.  But I would like to be able to save the zest from oranges limes and all the lemons I use.  I am looking for a reliable way to remove the waxes but there seem to be quite a few different types of wax permitted in the UK and my concern is how you could know with confidence that you have removed it all.   

This is not a scientifically based reply.

That said, I use a lot of zest. And what I do is scrub the citrus with a vegetable brush and Dawn dish washing liquid and rinse, rinse, rinse. It works on ducks caught in oil spills (minus the vegetable brush), that's good enough for me.

Earlier this summer I made homemade Limoncello and the recipe said to simply pour boiling water over the lemons and then rub them in a kitchen towel.  I put a few lemons at a time in a colander and poured boiling water from my tea kettle over them and then turned them over and did the other side before rubbing them dry.  I think it worked fine and the zest still had lots of flavor.

I put the fruit into a bowl of boiling water for a minute or so then scrub it with a brush. Thankfully I only need to do this with oranges as the supermarket we buy our food from sells unwaxed lemons.

I scrub them in hot water but I probably eat a lot of wax. Oh well.

I use a mix of a little bit of vinegar and baking soda plus hot water