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Welcome to India. India is known for a quite a few things.

Food.

Dance.

And of course, fashion.

A staple of Indian fashion is the sari, a multipart garment that includes up to 9 yards of fabric! And though the sari is the result of a long and painstaking process, it is just the beginning.

In Dehli, independent businesswomen called sari wallah women go door-to-door to collect used saris.

GreenSewn then takes the silk saris and continues the process of upcycling.

The saris are washed using the natural fruit of the soapberry tree to avoid poisoning the environment with toxic detergents.

And after some cutting, stitching and wrapping the saris are turned into beautiful bracelets….

…and scarves!

And for every purchase made, GreenSewn plants a tree through Trees for the Future!

“Between 1964 and 1973, the equivalent of one B-52 bomb shattered upon Laos every 8 minutes.” This fact makes Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world, and also comprises the opening of a trailer about peaceBOMB bracelets. It’s a story that weaves together history, politics, development, rebuilding, and design.

We’re extra inspired by Article22 and the peaceBOMB bracelets because they don’t try to forget or erase the legacy of the bombings in Laos: They literally and tangibly incorporate the assault into the design by making the bracelets out of war scrap metal.

Their film points out facts such as these: the United States spent $145 million to build their new embassy in Laos, but only $7 million to clean up the bombs that are still on the ground and harming people who come across them. 30% of the bombs that were dropped from 1964-1973 did not detonate – bomb removal, therefore, is not a luxury item on a to-do list, but a critical part of an agenda for safety. That’s why each peaceBOMB bracelet funds the clearing of 1 to 15 square meters of land in Laos.

The bracelets themselves are made by farmer-artisans who have the opportunity to diversify their income by handcrafting bracelets from these war scraps. Article 22 was founded by Elizabeth Suda (also an alum of our alma mater, Williams College), who is passionate about using social business to link artisans with a sustainable market. Article22 and the peaceBOMB project is about creating opportunity – economic opportunity that immediately empowers these communities in Laos, but also the broader opportunity to rebuild a country devastated by war.

Hand in Hand founders Bill and Courtney are a husband-and-wife social entrepreneurship duo that had been thinking about ideas for a sustainable business for years when they came across an article in 2011. They read a story – unfortunately, the nonfiction kind – that said 5 million children die each year from water-related illnesses.

“We were aware of the water crisis, but we weren’t aware that a bar of soap could prevent half of those deaths,” said Bill when he described that moment of reading the article. Today, they have an enterprise that donates a bar of soap for every bar of soap purchased.

So he and his wife got started – and quickly. Learning as they went, within seven months of reading that article they had started Hand in Hand. By February of 2012, Bill and Courtney were in Haiti on their first soap drop. They had partnered with My Neighbor’s Children in Orlando, Florida because they knew the founder firsthand and, importantly, they were small enough to work with Hand in Hand to schedule soap distributions according to their purchases.

Bill explained, however, that he and Courtney thought hard about how to make donations that were sustainable: simply dumping products in developing countries or impoverished areas can often disrupt local economies – perhaps ultimately doing more harm than good.

In picking a specific community to work with in Haiti, Bill and Courtney also know that the orphanages simply don’t have budgets to go out and purchase soap. And they know firsthand who they are helping: “We don’t think of just ‘children,’” Bill explained about their concept of the project, “we have specific children that we’re thinking of.”

But disrupting local economies isn’t just something they’re trying to avoid: it’s something they’re actively addressing. Hand in Hand is partnering with Whole Planet, the nonprofit arm of Whole Foods, to fund micro-credit loans in the U.S. and abroad.

And finally, Hand in Hand has this amazing acknowledgment that it’s not only people, but also the places we all live in, that need help. Most soap companies use palm oil harvested from cleared rainforest. Through their partnership with SeaCology, they save 50 square feet of rainforest in Southeast Asia for every soap bar purchase.

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Designed Good is an editorial-meets-store that curates products at the intersection of design and social good. We pair every product with the story of how it makes a difference (you just read one!).

Join the movement and purchase Hand in Hand soaps today at www.designedgood.com.