Periods Pollution: How Menstrual Products Affecting Our Environment

 

432 million pads/sanitary napkins are generated in India annually, the potential to cover landfills spread over 24 hectares.

This is a ridiculous amount of pollution which is hazardous with toxic chemicals leaching the soil, strong and harsh odours emitted by the waste disposed of in landfills or buried in the soil.

Menstruation is still a prohibitive topic of our society where women feel hesitant to talk about their needs; and discussing menstrual wastes can be even harder.

It’s not something that many people are comfortable discussing openly, in spite of the fact that half the planet experiences menstruation once a month, every month, for an average of four decades.

Menstruation is one of the most natural and healthy parts of life, but inappropriate disposal of used menstrual material also causes serious environmental damages, which we cannot ignore.

Menstrual waste is the waste produced by a menstruating person. This may include disposable pads and tampons that are used in managing menstruation and then disposed of as waste after use, which is muffled into sewerage systems, landfills, pit latrines, fields and water bodies; overall this has a detrimental effect on the environment.

Did you know that conventional sanitary pads - 'the product favoured around the world' contain a high percentage of plastic? One estimate is that pads are made of up to 90% plastic  – another is that a pack of menstrual pads is equivalent to 4 plastic bags .

YES, most menstrual products contain plastics and we don't dispose of them properly,

Tampons have plastic in them too – even in the string – and plastic applicators are made from polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

Millions of pads are dumped into landfills and oceans every year,

like plastic bags, forks, straws, coffee stirrers, soda bottles and most food packaging, disposable feminine hygiene products are single-use plastics, and they contribute significantly to the pollution problem. A big reason the world falls silent on this topic is because people just aren't comfortable talking about menstruation—it remains taboo. 

But, not talking about periods means - ‘it’s difficult to discuss all the issues openly and honestly’.

However, the fact remains that menstrual products generate extraordinary amounts of waste. It has been estimated that an average woman disposes approximately 150 kilograms of tampons, pads, and applicators in her lifetime, around 90% of which is plastic. (This might come as a surprise to many, since unlike food products there is no legal obligation for menstrual product manufacturers to list ingredients on their packaging; although most of this information is available online).

The great majority of these products end up in landfills (where it can take over 450 years for them to decompose), or worse, as litter on our beaches or polluting our oceans. In fact, menstrual products are one of the most commonly found single-use plastic items in marine litter.

Findings from the Marine Conservation Society shows that on average, 4.8 pieces of menstrual waste are found per 100 meters of beach cleaned; this amounts to 4 pads, panty-liners and backing strips, along with at least one tampon and applicator for every 100 meter of beach.

Beyond the visible plastic debris, there is also the issue of microplastics, defined as pieces smaller than 5 millimeters. Although research on microplastics has been growing, much remains unknown about the exact impacts on human health or the environment.

The Journal of The Institution of Environmental Sciences found that around 2.5 million tampons, 1.4 million sanitary liners, and 700,000 panty liners are flushed down UK toilets every day, whereas countries without stringent disposal systems in place, these products can be found in the streets or on rubbish dumps being hand-sorted, leaving poor workers at huge health risk.

As well as their contribution to plastic pollution, a year's worth of a typical menstrual product impacts on climate too, with a carbon footprint of 5.3kg CO2 equivalent.

The Women’s Environmental Network has found that, on average, a woman will use more than 11,000 disposable menstrual products over her lifetime. This produces a staggering amount of waste.

Disposable period products are only used for four to eight hours before being placed in sanitary bins or general household waste destined for landfill or incineration.

It is despicable that, despite warnings on packaging that products like wipes and tampons aren't flushable, women continue to dispose of them this way,  some of these products pose health hazards due to its chemical cocktail content (dioxin, furan, pesticides and other endocrine disruptors); situation forcing water companies to spend huge amounts of money clearing blockages.

With no knowledge of how to dispose of them, most women just throw them in the garbage bin which usually gets mixed up with dry, wet and hazardous waste.

Menstrual waste load in India,

Most common menstrual hygiene product in India is sanitary napkins which are disposable and they can have an adverse impact on the environment due to the huge amounts of plastics they contain.

According to the Menstrual Hygiene Alliance of India (MHAI) - around 12.3 billion sanitary napkins, amounting to 113,000 tonnes of waste, reach India’s landfills every year.

Whereas, the Environmental Group Toxics Link, Delhi - released a new study titled 'Menstrual Products and their Disposal' has raised serious concerns on improper disposal methods and non-segregation of menstrual waste from household waste, which leads to unhygienic working conditions for waste workers, also pose the risk of infectious diseases among them.

432 million pads/sanitary napkins are generated in India annually, the potential to cover landfills spread over 24 hectares.

This is a ridiculous amount of pollution which is hazardous with toxic chemicals leaching the soil, strong and harsh odours emitted by the waste disposed of in landfills or buried in the soil.

Sanitary waste disposal has become an increasing problem in India as the plastic used in disposable sanitary napkins are not biodegradable and lead to health and environmental hazards. The impact is more pronounced because of the unorganised ways of municipal solid waste management and poor community collection, disposal and transportation networks in the cities and villages, most sanitary waste ends up in landfills mixed with solid waste or dumped openly where it stays for centuries and add to the micro-plastic pollution, that pose significant health and environmental hazards. Used pads often also end up clogging drains and polluting water bodies - the Toxics Link report.

The study has also raised strong concerns over the use of small-scale incinerators, which have emerged as a favoured-disposal technology and are being installed in various establishments like rural schools, colleges, hostels etc., as there are no minimum standards set for these.

"Improper burning of used pads in these low cost, low-temperature incinerators can result in the emission of dioxins and furans, causing more harm to the environment and our health. There are no tests or monitoring done which is a serious gap," - stated by Priti Banthia Mahesh, Chief Program Coordinator at Toxics Link.

Myles Ellege, Senior Director at RTI International, a leading non-profit applied research and consulting organisation based in North Carolina, US, said -"although some Indian states and cities have given some attention to waste segregation or waste management with incinerators at schools or institutional settings. But, it is not widespread. The issue of managing menstrual waste is one that needs more attention... MHM (Menstrual Hygiene Management) is a neglected issue, and disposal is probably the most neglected topic in the MHM value chain,"

According to the National Family Health Survey (2015-16) report of the Health Ministry, 48.5 per cent of women in rural areas use sanitary pads while 77.5 percent of urban women use them. Overall, 57.6 percent of women use sanitary pads in India.

WaterAid India, a non-profit organisation, stresses on the need to find sustainable alternatives to menstrual hygiene practices in India, as it has estimated that of this 121 million girls and women dispose of about 21,780 million pads annually, which poses a major threat to the country’s waste management crisis.

In order to manage sanitary waste, the new guidelines in the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate have made it mandatory for manufacturers to provide a pouch or wrapper for proper disposal of menstrual waste whenever they sell their products. That means the pouch should be made of materials that are valuable or can be decomposed easily without polluting the environment. However, implementation still remains a huge issue.

India produces 9000 tonnes of Sanitary waste every year. This is equivalent to weighing the Statue of Unity. Four times. Despite the massive waste generated in the country, India does not have separate laws governing the disposal of sanitary waste. Only two cities – Bengaluru and Pune – have laws on segregation of sanitary waste wherein the sanitary waste must be separately handed over along with the dry and wet waste of the household.

What are the alternatives?,

In order to align with environmental concerns, menstruators around the world should start using reusable period products such as menstrual cups and period pants.

Now reusable products like cups, sponges and absorbent menstrual underwear are growing in popularity around the world. These environmentally friendlier (Plastic-free) options are being popularised on social media, where innovative companies are capitalizing on consumers’ increased awareness of the plastic problem as a commercial opportunity to promote their “eco-friendly” products on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Menstrual cups are not only eco-friendly but can be a real money saver too. Yes, there is an upfront cost, which could be a barrier for many – but the savings over 10 years are significant.

Of course, this isn’t right for everyone – so washable pads or period underwear are other options.

Another alternative to traditional menstrual products is the reusable sea sponge. Menstrual sea sponges can be made of either synthetic materials or of all-natural sea sponge harvested from the ocean floor, the latter of which are biodegradable and compostable. The sponge works much like a tampon, and has to be removed and rinsed/cleaned every few hours.

Despite the fact that these products go a long way in reducing plastic waste, not everyone is willing to use them. For example, due to the societal notion that one loses their “virginity” by using products such as menstrual cups that need to be inserted into the vagina, many refrain from doing so.

In terms of the disposal of sanitary products, more action is needed. We must all commit to making small changes and substitutions to our own cycle routine. This could be by stocking up on non-applicator or organic products or by binning rather than flushing our pads and tampons.