#letstalkpads Raising Awareness

For two years now I have called myself an ethical consumer; i.e: I buy products and use services that are produced in a way that minimises social and/or environmental damage. I have religiously followed this lifestyle and truly believed I was making a difference; until I came across Saathi.

Saathi is a social enterprise making eco-friendly sanitary napkins that are fully biodegradable! This is when I realised a massive flaw in my opted lifestyle! The real crime I was committing was not while buying synthetic fabric but I was harming the environment EVERY month by using commercial disposal pads.

If you were able to attend our Let’s Talk Pads workshop on Friday the 6th at FabLab, CEPT you have indulged with us in some staggering statistics. At the workshop, we learned that currently 12% or 335 million Indian women are using sanitary napkins, mainly commercial ones. Even though the numbers are surprisingly low, the effects of these disposable pads are even more shocking. 334 million disposal napkin users means they are disposing 432 million pads EVERY MONTH! That is approximately 9000 tonnes of pads ending up in landfills EVERY MONTH!

Commercial disposal napkins are made from a combination of plastic, rayon, bleach and other chemicals. The current way of disposing these inorganic sanitary pads, as most of us are guilty of, is by mixing them with household waste and dumping them in a bin so that it is ready to be taken to a landfill. So when they end up in landfills they lie there for nearly 500 - 800 years until it disappears.

So like our participants, some of you might be thinking there must be another way of disposing these pads. There are! During the workshop we talked about biodegradable materials, composting and other brands producing organic pads. Although alternatives do exist and we can debate about the pros and cons about all the alternatives at hand; at Saathi we believe, citizens must, first, be made aware of what they are buying, how they are using and how they are disposing pads. This is one of the main aims of our Let’s Talk Pads workshops. We hope that the participants at the FabLab workshop were able to learn something valuable and will encourage their peers to make better buying, using and disposing decisions.

One of the questions we did ask our participants was ‘How will you raise awareness about disposal methods and organic products?’. Here are some of the solutions our workshop participants put forward:

Education:

1. Put visual aid/posters in public toilets, including schools, offices, restaurants, cafes etc.

2. Educate men as well as mothers. Educate mothers by engaging them in forums and discussions so that they can then better educate their daughters.

3. Equate organic products to other commercial products.

Experiments:

1. Experiment with different disposal methods in a small patch of landfills.

2. Adopt an area within a city to experiment with disposal methods.

3. Feedback systems are necessary so that things are not just implemented but also looked after.

Social Media:

1. Discussion forums

And my personal favourite related to taboos was badges! Let’s have badges that openly and freely proclaim ‘YES! I am bleeding today!’ Or how about another badge that says ‘I am bleeding green’ to start a discussion and awareness around greener alternatives.

If you have any suggestions on how we and others can raise awareness about sanitary waste and disposal please write to us at: letstalk@saathipads.com and/or join our discussion at #letstalkpads

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