This pigment is called kumkum, straight from the Himalayas.

I love that color.

Hi, I'm Deysi from Design Squad.

I'm Eleanor from Design Squad.

It's melting pretty fast.

Today we're at D-Lab... ELEANOR: At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We met Jessica, and she's the outreach coordinator.

And we work together with communities around the world to develop low-cost, sustainable technologies that can improve the lives of people living in poverty.

This is Nathan and Kristin from the team at D-Lab that works on the organic dye crayons.

ELEANOR: We learned that D-Lab has a project in a region of India in the Himalayan Mountains.

The people living there make natural fabric dyes from organic plants.

D-Lab partners and students helped them find a new way to use the dyes to make a product that they can sell around the world: crayons.

So this is one of the colors that we did in India.

It's from pigments straight from plants that you can find in the surrounding community.

So we can show you how to make the crayons.

ELEANOR: Awesome.

So the ingredients we're going to use here are the soy wax.

This is going to be what holds everything together.

And this is one of the pigments that I brought from India.

It's called eupatorium.

The pigment is the stuff that's going to color the wax.

For the yellow crayon, we're going to add turmeric.

ELEANOR: The dyes that they use are just spices and plants that have a really strong color.

And for the red crayon, we're going to use the kumkum powder.

This is a pigment that is used to create the marking for different social or religious purposes, and it's usually put on the forehead.

ELEANOR: Kristin is holding the can of the red mixture into the boiling pot of water to then get the wax and the dye to melt together and make our crayon.

I'm now ready to pour my nice turmeric color.

DEYSI: What we're using for molds is the peanut butter cup wrappers.

NATHAN: I'm going to go ahead and pour the nice red color from the kumkum.

The crayons look great.

Oh, look, it's so pretty!

ELEANOR: So now our crayons our dry, I'm going to have to take them out of their molds.

I've been using crayons my whole life, and I can't believe I just made one!

Whoa, that's so cool!

Mine's really a nice yellow.

DEYSI: D-Lab's goal is to enable students to use science and engineering to create a positive impact around the world.

NATHAN: That's good blending right there.

Gotta get creative.

That's awesome.