What difference can one menstrual cup make when oil companies continue to bleed the earth dry? Well…it’s complicated.
How to Make Your Period More Planet-Friendly
A hundred fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. Would you, a lone citizen, consider combating the environmental crisis by using the same silicone menstrual cup every month?
I kid, I kid—but in all seriousness, that is what much of the marketing around having “a more sustainable period” sounds like. Period panties are supposedly “saving the planet.” People are shamed into giving up tampons. And as the climate situation worsens (floods, flames, apocalyptic sunsets), and it becomes clear that corporations are to blame (PG&E sparked another forest fire, a gas pipeline set the ocean ablaze), citizens are over the idea that individual action is the answer. What difference can one menstrual cup make when oil companies continue to bleed the earth dry? Well… it’s complicated.
Today, periods are a significant source of waste. A single menstruator ends up “using 5,000 to 10,000 tampons throughout their lifetime,” Jennifer Brush, an executive at period care brand Cora, tells Vogue. “That’s a lot of material going to a landfill.” In the United States alone, tampons, pads, and panty liners create about 200,000 metric tons of garbage each year—from the products themselves, yes, but also from the wrappers, applicators, and containers they come in. (Not-so-fun fact: Even pads are 90% plastic.) This is to say nothing of the waste associated with producing period products. Plastic and polyester are made from fossil fuels, and turning these materials into menstrual items often involves the use of endocrine disruptors and other environmentally-destructive chemicals. Conventional cotton is farmed with pesticides, and even organic cotton demands water-intensive processing.
None of this is the fault of period-havers. In fact, menstruating was a relatively low-impact affair for centuries. Then, in the 1960s, “chemists were busily developing sophisticated plastics and other synthetics,” Alejandra Borunda reports for National Geographic. “The technologies leapt forward so quickly that manufacturers found themselves searching for new markets into which they could incorporate their new materials. One of the markets they found was menstrual products.” It was the dawn of disposable living, a corporate invention that promised consumers convenience—but was more convenient for corporations themselves. For example, the introduction of single-use pads and tampons “meant that menstruators would have to stock up each month, locking them into decades of purchases,” Borunda writes.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Jessica DeFino
