02/07/2019
As billions of sanitary pads pollute our environment, India needs to focus on managing menstrual waste. Over a billion of these non-compostable sanitary pads are making their way into sewerage systems, landfills, fields and water bodies in India every month.
Long-lasting, comfortable, stain-free and affordable are the thoughts that come to every woman's mind when she picks up a disposable sanitary napkin.
What doesn't occur to most women is that over a billion of these non-compostable sanitary pads are making their way into sewerage systems, landfills, fields and water bodies in India every month, posing huge environmental and health risks.
With taboos and superstitions galore about menstruating women in India, safe technologies and interventions to dispose and treat menstrual waste have become a huge challenge.
Though the Indian government is ensuring that all women and girls, especially in rural pockets, have easy access to sanitary napkins, the need of the hour, is to give "more attention" to managing menstrual waste, which is estimated to be 113,000 tonnes annually.
Perhaps realising the growing problem of menstrual waste.
According to Shradha Shreejaya, an active campaigner in Sustainable Menstruation Kerala Collective, a Kerala-based NGO that promotes bio-degradable and toxin-free sanitary products, "India has been very messy about dealing with its sanitary waste..." and described the new rules as "very weak".
We have found ignorance regarding the raw materials used in making most sanitary products that are falsely assumed to be only cotton and plastic -- the products are more than 90 percent plastic with super absorbent polymers and non-woven plastic components that make it extremely difficult to dispose off.
If we do not begin to address this issue now, we will have volume of non-biodegradable waste that will take hundreds of years to degrade.
According to a survey, about 336 million girls and women experience menstruation in India, which means that approximately 121 million of them are using disposable sanitary napkins.
In a survey, Path, a global leader in innovations, which works with industry, governments and other stakeholders, to bridge gaps between the supply and demand of quality products and is currently working on testing a hybrid reusable sanitary pad, estimated that over a billion of these non compostable pads are being dumped in landfills and sewerage systems.
Most women in big cities and towns go for commercial disposable sanitary napkins (DSN) not knowing that some of these products pose health hazards due to its chemical cocktail content (dioxin, furan, pesticides and other endocrine disruptors), said experts.
With no knowledge of how to dispose them off, most women just throw them in the garbage bin which usually gets mixed up with dry, wet and hazardous waste.
Apart from the fact that it cannot be recycled, the exposed sanitary napkin poses grave health risks for the waste collector.
The problem does not end here. The plastic layer which is used to make it stain-free and the chemicals used in producing it get further transferred between soil, water and air, experts added.
Most women and girls in rural India use cloth, which if not dried in proper sunlight for reuse could lead to further health complications. In fact, many women in rural India tend to throw them in open spaces, like rivers, wells and even roadsides as they don't have access to safe options.