HYDERABAD: When one thinks of sanitary pads, environmental hazard is not the first thing that comes to mind but people of HUDA colony in Manikonda are doing their best to create awareness on this often ignored pollutant.
Sanitary pads are used and discarded by millions of women everyday which end up in landfills. These pads don’t get degraded for hundreds of years as 90 per cent of the material used in commonly available sanitary pads is plastic. An environment-friendly alternative is that of cotton sanitary pads. Two available variants are use-and-throw reusable pads.
On Sunday an NGO named Dhruvansh distributed free use-and-throw cotton sanitary pads among 50 households in HUDA colony. Apart from this it also created awareness on the reusable variant of the cotton sanitary pads among colony women. Madhulika Choudhary of Dhruvansh said: “Most of the women were open to idea of shifting to biodegradable cotton sanitary pads. Some even registered with me for procuring them as it is not easily available in the market and buying online is the only option.”
Chaudhary said: “Lack of awareness among women regarding biodegradable cotton sanitary pads and shortage of these pads in market are the two major hurdles. I procured the biodegradable pads for free distribution from a company based in Puducherry. Government should push a policy to promote biodegradable cotton pads.”
A boon for poor women
Not just conserving environment but many menstruating women who still use cloth for menstrual hygiene will also inculcate habit of using sanitary pads if reusable biodegradable cotton pads are made available to them. A reusable cotton sanitary pad is available for anywhere between Rs 150-180. It can be washed and used for one year or even more. In contrast, women have to spend anywhere between Rs 150-200 monthly on the plastic sanitary pads.
A study conducted in Hyderabad on 150 women of menstruating age conducted by Supriya Garikipati of University of Liverpool Management School, UK, found that close to 57 per cent of women use cloth for menstrual protection mainly because they could not afford sanitary pads. This is also unhygienic. It also reported that 94 per cent of these women were willing to take up sanitary pads if they are provided reusable cotton pads.
The researcher said in her study, “We find that a large proportion of women willing to adopt safer practices-but unwilling to use disposable sanitary pads - are being abandoned by the current policy initiatives that have systematically focused on the provision of sanitary pads alone. This consistent exclusion of women from improved Menstrual Hygiene Management emphasises the importance of offering alternative products, such as re-usable cloth pads.”