I always love featuring green businesses to bring their name out there and in hopes that people choose to do business with a company that has our global ideals in mind. Many times these companies are small and home bases but if we as a global green community choose to only do business with small sustainable companies we can hopefully push out the big “green fakers” out. Earth Divas is one of these smaller companies that keeps sustainability and recycled materials in their sights. Earth Divasoffers a variety of items that are handmade by women and fairly traded for women. I am loving the concept that more and more businesses are helping women around the world gain their independence. Support Earth Divasby purchasing one of their adorable bags or hats! Don’t forget to peruse their jewelry too!!

A little about Earth Divas:

What the Future Holds
Our product name is changing from Hemp Sisters to Earth Divas. This transition should be complete sometime next year. Some product will still have Hemp Sister name on it until the transition is complete. We’re changing our name so only items with the Earth Divas name will be handmade, natural fiber, fair trade items. We currently have some items with the Hemp Sisters name that are made in the US and elsewhere and are not fair trade.

Earth Divas products are handmade, natural fiber, fair trade accessories made by women for women from around the world. We currently have items from Nepal and are adding jewelry from Columbia and hemp bags from Thailand. We hope that by next year we can offer products from several other countries.

Our natural fiber, handmade accessories from Kathmandu, Nepal are made by working women’s co-ops and small woman-owned cottage industry producers. We work directly with the people that make these items. We help them source supplies like zippers, rings and buckles, and provide feedback on designs and offer suggestions to improve quality. We work directly with and pay the people that make the items, we don’t work through a middleman, which is fairly common. My wife is from India, and each year for the last four years she and I have spent about a month in India, and I have spent a couple of weeks in Nepal working on new designs and trying to figure out better ways to make the core items that we will always have, like wallets, backpacks, hats and coin purses.

In Nepal, the hemp fabric that we use is from the remote Western Region of Nepal. It grows wild in the lower Himalayan Mountain regions. It is not cultivated or farmed as in all other countries. The villagers in this remote area cut the hemp down by hand and soften the hemp in water. Other larger processing countries use chemicals and softeners to get a consistent, smooth, refined finish. Nepali hemp is a bit rougher and uneven and has some color variations. The stalk of the hemp plant is then brushed into a wool like material and then spun by hand into a strand of twine. The twine is then woven by hand on a pit loom into a piece of fabric that is 1 meter by 3 meters long. The fabric is carted down the mountains on foot and to the nearest road where it is brought into Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, the craftswomen buy the fabric and make the unique and beautiful creations that we offer.

Our recycled silk items are of the highest possible quality because they are 100% silk. The silk is from the waste cuttings in India where silk sari’s are made. Most other recycled silk items contain other man-made fibers like nylon, which is soft, but not natural. Like the recycled silk items, the felted wool items are made by a working women’s co-op. The ladies we work with create the designs and make the items for us. The wool is imported from New Zealand