Just call Hand in Hand the TOMS of soap. For every bar of suds you purchase, Bill Glaab and Courtney Apple will donate a bar to a child in the developing world. Millions of children die each year because of unsafe drinking sources and poor sanitation, according to UNICEF, yet the simple act of handwashing can nearly halve the number of deaths from diarrhea and acute respiratory infections. Cleanliness isn’t just next to godliness, it also saves lives.
RAISING THE BAR
Hand in Hand makes its triple-milled, 100 percent vegetable-based soaps in Vermont from organic- and fair-trade-certified ingredients—no petrochemicals, gluten, parabens, or animal testing involved. Also verboten? Palm oil, a common soap constituent with links to rainforest destruction in Southeast Asia. Glaab and Apple’s position on the issue is ironclad. With every sale, Hand in Hand works with SeaCology to save 50 square feet of rainforest in areas where palm plantations are driving the orangutan to extinction.
Hand in Hand makes its 100 percent vegetable-based soaps from organic- and fair-trade-certified ingredients.
Although Glaab and Apple launched their company barely a year ago, they’ve already donated more than 5,000 bars of soap. In February, the duo hand-delivered soap to hundreds of orphan children in Haiti. “We have never seen children more excited to open up a bar of soap and smell it with their eyes closed, smiling ear to ear,” they write on their blog. Similar drops are planned for countries in Central America, South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Lather, rinse, repeat.