Reusable sanitary towels
by Bratzy
One gorgeous way to help save the environment is to address your period. As well as the joy of the Mooncup, we can consider reducing landfill one reusable sanitary towel at a time...
I heart the environment muchly; we've only got one and need to look after it, right? And along with the obvious stuff you can do, like recycling and reusing stuff, I started to think of less obvious things I could do to help the planet stay healthy. One thing that occurred to me was that I really do create a lot of waste during my period.
I got my period at 9 years old, and I imagine I'll have it until I'm, say 55. And I'll have roughly 598 periods in that time! Phew! You're meant to change a tampon or towel every few hours, right? We'll guess every 6 hours here for example, that's 4 a day. And if you bleed for around, say 4 days, that's 24 tampons or towels a period, or a grand total of 14352 over my menstruating lifetime. A lot of waste that sits in landfill just from little old me!
So after some research into it, I came across two choices, the mooncup or washable sanitary towels. Now which you want to use can depend on whether you prefer tampons or towels, or which you find less icky basically. Mooncups are similar to tampons in that you wear them on the inside, but there are articles about that here, so let's talk about washable sanitary towels.
Washable sanitary towels are kinda like those washable nappies you can get, and that were really popular before disposable ones came in. You use them, wash them, and use them again. So no throwing them away, but some more effort involved.
Some sites for reusable sanitary towels
The awesome thing about reusable sanitary towels is that they come on all shapes and colours and in a variety of sizes too. A few sites where you can find them are:
I'm not going to advise you on what site is the best - I'm not an advert! Personally, I got mine from earthwisegirls.co.uk as they had the nicest patterns, in my opinion. A few minutes on Google will surely get you more results, and you can pick and choose.
Which sanitary towels to go for
You can get a starter kit, which is what I went for. I'm a beginner so... pick the easiest one, right? But how many pads you need pretty much depends on your flow and how lazy you are about washing. More pads mean you don't end up having to wash them half way through your period because you've run out. The pads generally come in different lengths, for day or night, and they fit in a 'pocket' which you put on your underpants. It fastens around your pants with a popper, just like the sanitary towels with wings. And the best thing about the pads and pocket is that, if your period is light you can use one, or pop in two if it's heavy.
Looking after reusable sanitary towels
When you've used a pad, it's best to steep it in cold water for a while before washing; this helps with the 'staining' aspect of it. And don't use fabric conditioner when washing them – it affects the absorbency, which no one wants. You can even make your own pads if you're feeling very creative, although I haven't tried this yet - I'm too lazy. The pads are comfy, more so than disposable sanitary towels, and they feel super soft against your ladybits, which makes for a happier me during a very grumpy time!
Get the Mooncup Menstrual Cup
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Bratzy: I'm one of the few IT geeks I know and work in software support. Live in Belfast with my bonkers cat and spend my time eating chocolate, drinking tea, watching Supernatural and wondering what other random colours I can paint my nails :)
