KOCHI: When friends Atyantika Mookherjee, Manasvi Dholakia and Ishita Desai visited a waste treatment plant, they saw workers segregating used sanitary pads from the waste collected from households. “Even in the educated community, people still don’t realise the plight of sanitisation workers who have to manually segregate waste.
This made us think about making people aware of the sustainable ways of disposing of sanitary napkins,” said Ishita. The teenagers are students of the Navy Children School in Kochi. This was the beginning of The Red Lotus project, which aims to promote sustainable menstruation practices and address the not so addressed problem of proper disposal of sanitary napkins.
The reality struck while they watched the unhygienic disposal of sanitary pads. The least one can do is to segregate them from other waste, they said. “Thus, we began to make newspaper envelopes with our logo on them and distributed them among our neighbours,” said Ishita. It is called the ‘Me’ packet. The sticker helps the sanitisation workers identify the used napkin,” she added.
The trio conducts workshops for teaching menstruators how to make these envelopes to dispose of used sanitary napkins. As of now, they are organising fundraisers to acquire biodegradable pads for the underprivileged. As per data, less than 13 per cent of menstruators have access to sanitary pads. “We realise that not every menstruator can afford sustainable products,” said Ishita. “The aim is to raise Rs 25,000 from crowdfunding to meet our goal,” she added.
Through The Red Lotus, the students aim to highlight the plight of sanitisation workers and encourage menstruators to properly dispose of their menstrual waste. “We are looking for more volunteers across the country to carry the distribution drive of the ‘Me’ packet. The most recent drive was held in Surat and Mumbai,” said Ishita. The organisation is also looking for outsourcing the production of envelopes so they can distribute the ‘Me’ packets to large groups.
Their project can be found on Instagram @theredlotusproject