SEIZING THE PADMAN MOMENT
PadMan is doing a good thing, pushing us to talk about the most natural part of women’s lives—menstruation. But, really, shouldn’t the fact of a movie on the theme goad us to consider our place in the menstruation matrix? If you’re part of the just under 50 per cent Indian women who, says the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, use hygienic menstrual products (another, now-contested statistic claims 12 per cent), the point is, how do you dispose of them?
I’ve been witness to the anger of hundreds of waste workers—pickers, doorstep collectors, dumpsite scavengers, men and women—who come in contact with sanitary waste. Their anger comes from the perceived assault on their dignity. “Aren’t they educated? They live in such big houses, drive such big cars. Can’t they just think a little about these things?” an infuriated Lata asked of me. We were both standing on a sidewalk in West Delhi, just after she had collected and segregated the waste of about 130 households.
The new Solid Waste Management Rules of 2016 ask that sanitary waste be wrapped in newspaper and kept with dry waste—much of which is recycled in India. The rule gets the sentiment right but the action wrong. You cannot mix sanitary waste with anything else. Some citizens are making the effort to get it right. Bengaluru’s ‘2 Bin 1 Bag’ campaign is one. Several others wrap up the waste well—a positive step.
It isn’t over with user-level disposal. About 113,000 tonnes of menstrual waste is trashed every year—badly or well secured. What happens to all this waste? My colleague Chitra Mukherjee recalls her disappointment at visiting the much-touted Panaji solid waste system in 2016: two years’ worth of used sanitary waste awaited her, gathered as a minor hillock.
Almost every sanitary pad today is made primarily of plastic. It won’t decompose. It can’t be recycled. And in India, experience shows incineration means poisoning the air even more. So India is accumulating hundreds of thousands of the stuff every year, in its soil and waters.
You cannot truly dispose it of unless it ceases to be plastic. That many countries either landfill or incinerate sanitary waste doesn’t make it globally more popular or safer—even China is seeing public protests against such disposal. The world is stuck.
Biodegradable and compostable alternatives exist. But they’ll only end up as harmless earth if the user composts them at home or in a community composting initiative that she monitors. Don’t forget, if cities can’t even ensure banana peels are composted, is it logical to expect more? Compostable, unbleached pads would make the biggest impact in the health and family welfare ministry’s programme to distribute san pads to schoolgirls to prevent dropouts, where disposal would be safer for all students.
For many women with access to clean water, privacy and a lifestyle that doesn’t involve long hours at work, menstrual cups are an answer. They’re not for everyone—what do you do if you have hours of fieldwork, interviews or travel? Some women don’t like it. But they are reusable. Just like clean cloth pads. Unlike regular pads, they aren’t bizarrely taxed by GST.
Manufacturers have cold-shouldered efforts to talk menstrual waste, but it’s clear they have to be part of the solution—from manufacturing plastic-free pads to promoting awareness on their disposal to collaborating on final safe disposal. The real shame of menstruation is the absence of responsible action by manufacturers.
So, let’s not let go of the PadMan moment—it offers us an opportunity to talk about sustainable menstruation practices and policies that make the going lighter on the planet, its recyclers and India’s women and girls.
Manufacturers have long cold-shouldered efforts to talk menstrual waste, but it’s clear they need to be part of the solution— from manufacturing plastic-free pads to collaborating on their final safe disposal