By Kartik Johari,
In 2011 it was, “Kya aapke toothpaste mein namak hai?”
In 2021 it is “Kya aapke san-pad mein bamboo pulp hai?”
However, regardless of Lara Dutta’s greatest efforts, the salt in toothpaste trend sort of faded out. A cue eco-friendly pad makers may possibly be sensible to take.
Made of corn starch, banana fibre or bamboo pulp a number of new niche pad brands have joined what is getting referred to as a ‘nation-wide revolution’ to do away with plastic periods. ‘India has 121 million users of sanitary pads, who with their 12 billion plastic pads per year are clogging drains, blocking landfills and fueling climate change’1, our pad warriors are raging—marketing their solution as the fantastic match to clean your vagina, soul and carbon footprint.
However, just like Shakespeare’s, “All that glitters is not gold”, all that is greenwashed could not in fact be green.
Here’s why.
THRUTH PILL #1: Green components have a carbon footprint
Bamboo shoots look like miracle components. But what do they expense the atmosphere to make? Hours-lengthy, water-intensive, chemical laden extraction strategies that can be toxic to skin and effluent-heavy. Also, China is the only nation that produces bamboo on a industrial scale. Often with no set requirements or pesticide suggestions. Often at the expense of cute panda residences. Pads nevertheless look one hundred% green?
TRUTH PILL #2: Green pads are not one hundred% compostable
Conventional pads are made up of wood pulp, a superabsorbent polymer (SAP), cotton and plastic fibers. Many biodegradable pads replace the SAP and wood pulp, but nevertheless have to retain a minor quantity of plastic for waterproofing. But merely biodegradable does not imply compostable. For pads to be compostable, i.e. to be capable of disintegrating in soil in 90-180 days, the whole solution requirements to be made of a single ingredient so that microbes can do their point. However, with our current technologies, that is almost not possible. As a outcome, most green pads are not completely biodegradable.
TRUTH PILL #3: Composting is challenging, and difficult
But a partly compostable pad is superior no? you will say, correct? Correct, offered absolutely everyone has access to a compost pit like you do. You do, do not you?
Atleast a tiny patch in your backyard. No? A tiny square in your kitchen for peels. Also, no? What about a neighborhood compost pit? Oh, you do not even separate your garbage. Damn.
Sarcasm apart, image a household of 3 menstruators. They’d have 78 (3 x 16per cycle) pads to compost per month. Calculate the quantity of pads a year and can you envision the size their compost pit would have to be?
Fact is, all pads are equally polluting if they are not disposed appropriately. Plastic pads if incinerated appropriately or taken apart and recycled can be managed effectively.
Take a look at this chart from a 2018 paper by WaterAid India’s Arundhati Muralidharan. The dots are telling.
TRUTH PILL #4: Numbers are falsely alarming
According to our calculations based on the Central Pollution Control Board’s 2019 report, and a report funded by the Bill and Melinda Foundation menstrual waste types 3.27% of the annual waste generated in India (Table 3). Do you know what types 66%? Essential-to-life substances like polybags, multilayer pouches employed for meals packing. As a matter of truth, one-fifth of the silt that clogs Delhi’s drains for the duration of monsoons is made up of empty gutkha and pan masala packets! And however, we see editorials only on green pads, not green gutkha packets.
Moral: Calculations that make it look like a barrage of pads is upon us, can be misguiding. Data usually merits context and closer seeing.
TRUTH PILL #5: The true pad challenge is elsewhere.
Lack of menstrual hygiene is the fifth largest killer of females in the world, close behind heart illness, stroke, respiratory infections and COPD.
Available to much less than 40% of the nation (NFHS, 2016) it is not composition but the access of pads that we will need to be panicking about. Instead of guilting females on failing to save the world even though bleeding out, we ought to be encouraging them to select the selection most preferable to them.
Even today, regardless of wigs, SAP, anti-bacterial locks, pads leak, smell, get icky. ‘Green pads’ are extremely sophisticated and can tackle this, you say. They’re also incredibly, incredibly expensive. (Refer table 1)
Talking of alternatives—cloth pads and cups will need clean water. Running water and the privacy of functioning toilets continue to be scarce across the nation. Cloth pads will need to be dried in the sun—out there on laundry lines for our incredibly liberal society to see. Cups and tampons will need to be inserted. If you ever doubt the stigma that nevertheless revolves about insertion, attempt getting a conversation with your bai about on switching.
Before I conclude, I’d like to ask: Do you know how a lot of PET bottles India makes use of every single year? According to my estimation (Refer Table 2), 62.4 billion, or 5.2x Arundhati Muralidharan’s estimation of the quantity of pads employed every single year. Yet, PET is not a challenge as more than 70% of these recycled into clothes, roads, and so forth without having the involvement of customers, makers or even the government.
Similarly, the disposal of pads (plastic or otherwise), as well, can be managed completely.
There exists technologies that can separate out the pad into its a variety of elements and then approach it. Italy based Tecnofer is just one enterprise that is capable of this. Japan, which has technology to build electrical energy out of soiled diapers. In Pune, a 25-year-old engineer Ajinkya Dhariya has developed Padcare, a machine to recycle menstrual waste. While in Vadodara, almost 6 years back innovator Shyam Sunder Bedekar invented the Ashudinashak, an eco-friendly clay incinerator that can be used to conveniently dispose of pads, even by rural females.
Thus, clearly, plastic is not the challenge. Mindset is.
Because all pads will need to be is reasonably priced, out there and quick for customers to use and throw. There are a lot of more ‘plastics’ to tackle prior to we come to the indispensable one in our menstruators’ panties.
(The author is Vice President, Nobel Hygiene. Views expressed are individual and do not reflect the official position or policy of the TheSpuzz Online.)