4 ms·

Well the relative impact isn't that high, though I was pretty shocked to learn how much plastic is contained in tampons in other countries. My napkin math says

Well the relative impact isn't that high, though I was pretty shocked to learn how much plastic is contained in tampons in other countries. My napkin math says that a whole life of using these full-plastics tampons equals about 1000 miles of driving an average-mpg car (11000 tampons, 10g of plastic per tampon, 25mpg as the national average efficiency). So car-sharing one month for a 20 mile commute has about the same impact as never using disposable tampons for the whole life.

newsclues 6y ago
But the choice isn’t car sharing or tampons, it’s tampons vs a reusable reply device that lasts forever.
- bildung 6y ago
  Indeed. The switch to reusable options comes with its own challenges, though (says my social circle, I don't menstruate). So if the goal is to change things in one's own life for the sake of sustainability, there are lower hanging fruits than menstrual hygiene.
  - newsclues 6y ago
    And yet if society is pushing a change in distribution of these products why not go with the environmental option that is also more economical? Is Big Tampon really a thing?
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      > And yet if society is pushing a change in distribution of these products why not go with the environmental option that is also more economical? Because the "environmental" option is difficult if not impossible sometimes: 1) not all vaginas are created equal. Finding the correct type and size of cups that fit can easily consume over a hundred € or more, and that's with Amazon shopping in a developed country. In a poor country with dysfunctional infrastructure? Good luck finding a cup in the first place and pray it somewhat fits. In the end, it's the classical "cheap shoe problem" - a poor person can't afford 100$ for a shoe that lasts 10 years and so has to spend 10$ a year on cheap shoes, while a rich person buys a decent shoe and doesn't have to worry for 10 years... the end result is, both spend the same amount of money, but the poor person has a poorer quality of life and causes more resource waste. 2) You need to clean reusable cups or panty liners. This requires access to clean boiling water and some sort of container to boil the product in - and I'd bet 99% of people aren't exactly fond of using containers they use to prepare food in for cleaning period products, especially in regions where women on their period are banished from the house / village.
      - tjalfi 6y ago
        Is [0] the cheap shoes story you were thinking of? Here is an excerpt from it. > “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > ... > But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
        mschuster91 6y ago
        Yep, thanks, it's that one.
    - bildung 6y ago
      All sources I could find about that topic indicate the plan is to offer free menstrual products. Nowhere did it state anything about them having to be disposable. It wouldn't matter anyway, because the environmental impact of giving away those products for free is exactly zero: Women won't start to menstruate more to get free tampons.
    - tfrobot 6y ago
      _or_ hey, why not give women the options to decide for themselves? Yes big tampon is really a thing (more about flow than size) but also so are slender/junior tampons for teenagers.
  - Item_Boring 6y ago
    To chime in here and elaborate a bit further: Generally we have 2 “traditional” choices for menstruation products: tampons and sanitary pads. Reusable options for both are the menstruation cups (as already mentioned) and washable thus reusable sanitary pads. As far as I know there are also reusable tampons but I don’t know anyone who uses them and they aren’t that widespread. Menstruation cups are - especially when starting to use them - a bit messy. One has to empty them when they are full and ideally you should at least rinse it after every use. This is a bit uncomfortable and bloody in public bathrooms. Secondly, finding the correct size can be quite tricky especially since the cups are a bit more pricey. Thirdly, when a woman gets an IUD doctors generally recommend against using cups in the first few weeks/ months after insertion. And lastly, they’re simply not comfortable to wear for everyone. Reusable sanitary pads are a bit different but in my experience don’t replace the traditional pads. Particularly during heavy flow days those simply don’t have the capacity to “catch everything”. Further, if you have to change the pad in public you will have to carry around the used one. So yes, I agree with you, there are simpler ways to start taking care of one’s rubbish production :)
  - tfrobot 6y ago
    +1 hi, menstruating human here. I don’t represent all of my gender, but can say from experience that yes reusable options aren’t always the best option. You have the issue of needing (ideally) clean running water & clean hands each time you empty the cup... maybe more relevant to the discussion than the sustainability argument. (Try getting your period at Burning Man.) Also many women never use menstrual cups because they can be difficult to insert and remove. While TSS has ceased to be common in most places, our education about not leaving tampons / menstrual cups in for too long likely has a lot to do with it. If you have limited access to tampons or necessary resources maybe you leave them in longer than you should, harboring bacteria, etc. So idk, I care about sustainability too it’s clearly an important issue, but so is gender equity & women’s basic health & access to education...
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > it’s tampons vs a reusable reply device that lasts forever ... but you have to wash it with water and cleaning products, and possibly carry around dirty. Does it still come ahead? Probably. I don't know. We had this conversation with my wife around cups and reusable pads, and we're still not 100% sure which is the most environmental-friendly option. I raise this as a general point: I've never seen any good resources to help people estimate full environmental impact of disposable vs. reusable things, accounting both the difference of {emissions, energy, water, plastics} used in manufacturing of disposable vs. reusable item, and then the difference of those in ongoing maintenance. It's important we learn to figure this out as consumers, because I fear otherwise our civilization will die on lots of bad decisions driven by not knowing the total costs. Things like not realizing you'll have to use a reusable bag a couple thousand times before you're ahead energy-wise over single-use plastic bags (the correct answer here being, treat your reusable bag with respect, and find other ways to reduce packaging churn - otherwise you'll likely lose or destroy your eco bag before you achieve a net environmental win). (On that note, I recommend watching videos about how things are made - it's a good way to calibrate your sense of how much plastic actually goes into a thing. In case of e.g. disposable trash bags, my brain can't really internalize information like "10 microns thick", but actually seeing the process of making a big roll of plastic film and turning it into unending stream of bags made the relative amount of material involved intuitively comprehensible. Also, videos of industrial machines are relaxing to watch.)
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > I raise this as a general point: I've never seen any good resources to help people estimate full environmental impact of disposable vs. reusable things, accounting both the difference of {emissions, energy, water, plastics} used in manufacturing of disposable vs. reusable item, and then the difference of those in ongoing maintenance. It's a very good point. This kind of stuff is impossible for the lay person to estimate. Here's one example for nappies. It's 37 pages long. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  - azornathogron 6y ago
    > It's important we learn to figure this out as consumers, because I fear otherwise our civilization will die on lots of bad decisions driven by not knowing the total costs I don't think it is feasible to figure these things out as a consumer in any way that scales to the range of products that we use, changes in manufacturing and materials over time, and the available attention that each consumer can dedicate to the problem. I would like to see more externalities incorporated into the price of goods, via taxes or other market intervention. Of course, that's hideously difficult as well, but I feel it's closer to being feasible than consumers estimating externalities of each product themselves. (Probably we need both approaches, and more besides.) Edit: a good thing about incorporating externalities into prices is that to a large extent it should naturally aggregate through the whole production/supply chain. If plastic is a problem and you tax plastic feed-stock (probably someone who knows about plastic manufacture would have a better suggestion, sorry), then that naturally will be incorporated into the price of everything made out of plastic, proportionately to the amount of plastic the thing required.

newsclues 6y ago

But the choice isn’t car sharing or tampons, it’s tampons vs a reusable reply device that lasts forever.

bildung 6y ago
Indeed. The switch to reusable options comes with its own challenges, though (says my social circle, I don't menstruate). So if the goal is to change things in one's own life for the sake of sustainability, there are lower hanging fruits than menstrual hygiene.
- newsclues 6y ago
  And yet if society is pushing a change in distribution of these products why not go with the environmental option that is also more economical? Is Big Tampon really a thing?
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > And yet if society is pushing a change in distribution of these products why not go with the environmental option that is also more economical? Because the "environmental" option is difficult if not impossible sometimes: 1) not all vaginas are created equal. Finding the correct type and size of cups that fit can easily consume over a hundred € or more, and that's with Amazon shopping in a developed country. In a poor country with dysfunctional infrastructure? Good luck finding a cup in the first place and pray it somewhat fits. In the end, it's the classical "cheap shoe problem" - a poor person can't afford 100$ for a shoe that lasts 10 years and so has to spend 10$ a year on cheap shoes, while a rich person buys a decent shoe and doesn't have to worry for 10 years... the end result is, both spend the same amount of money, but the poor person has a poorer quality of life and causes more resource waste. 2) You need to clean reusable cups or panty liners. This requires access to clean boiling water and some sort of container to boil the product in - and I'd bet 99% of people aren't exactly fond of using containers they use to prepare food in for cleaning period products, especially in regions where women on their period are banished from the house / village.
    - tjalfi 6y ago
      Is [0] the cheap shoes story you were thinking of? Here is an excerpt from it. > “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > ... > But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
      - mschuster91 6y ago
        Yep, thanks, it's that one.
  - bildung 6y ago
    All sources I could find about that topic indicate the plan is to offer free menstrual products. Nowhere did it state anything about them having to be disposable. It wouldn't matter anyway, because the environmental impact of giving away those products for free is exactly zero: Women won't start to menstruate more to get free tampons.
  - tfrobot 6y ago
    _or_ hey, why not give women the options to decide for themselves? Yes big tampon is really a thing (more about flow than size) but also so are slender/junior tampons for teenagers.
- Item_Boring 6y ago
  To chime in here and elaborate a bit further: Generally we have 2 “traditional” choices for menstruation products: tampons and sanitary pads. Reusable options for both are the menstruation cups (as already mentioned) and washable thus reusable sanitary pads. As far as I know there are also reusable tampons but I don’t know anyone who uses them and they aren’t that widespread. Menstruation cups are - especially when starting to use them - a bit messy. One has to empty them when they are full and ideally you should at least rinse it after every use. This is a bit uncomfortable and bloody in public bathrooms. Secondly, finding the correct size can be quite tricky especially since the cups are a bit more pricey. Thirdly, when a woman gets an IUD doctors generally recommend against using cups in the first few weeks/ months after insertion. And lastly, they’re simply not comfortable to wear for everyone. Reusable sanitary pads are a bit different but in my experience don’t replace the traditional pads. Particularly during heavy flow days those simply don’t have the capacity to “catch everything”. Further, if you have to change the pad in public you will have to carry around the used one. So yes, I agree with you, there are simpler ways to start taking care of one’s rubbish production :)
- tfrobot 6y ago
  +1 hi, menstruating human here. I don’t represent all of my gender, but can say from experience that yes reusable options aren’t always the best option. You have the issue of needing (ideally) clean running water & clean hands each time you empty the cup... maybe more relevant to the discussion than the sustainability argument. (Try getting your period at Burning Man.) Also many women never use menstrual cups because they can be difficult to insert and remove. While TSS has ceased to be common in most places, our education about not leaving tampons / menstrual cups in for too long likely has a lot to do with it. If you have limited access to tampons or necessary resources maybe you leave them in longer than you should, harboring bacteria, etc. So idk, I care about sustainability too it’s clearly an important issue, but so is gender equity & women’s basic health & access to education...
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> it’s tampons vs a reusable reply device that lasts forever ... but you have to wash it with water and cleaning products, and possibly carry around dirty. Does it still come ahead? Probably. I don't know. We had this conversation with my wife around cups and reusable pads, and we're still not 100% sure which is the most environmental-friendly option. I raise this as a general point: I've never seen any good resources to help people estimate full environmental impact of disposable vs. reusable things, accounting both the difference of {emissions, energy, water, plastics} used in manufacturing of disposable vs. reusable item, and then the difference of those in ongoing maintenance. It's important we learn to figure this out as consumers, because I fear otherwise our civilization will die on lots of bad decisions driven by not knowing the total costs. Things like not realizing you'll have to use a reusable bag a couple thousand times before you're ahead energy-wise over single-use plastic bags (the correct answer here being, treat your reusable bag with respect, and find other ways to reduce packaging churn - otherwise you'll likely lose or destroy your eco bag before you achieve a net environmental win). (On that note, I recommend watching videos about how things are made - it's a good way to calibrate your sense of how much plastic actually goes into a thing. In case of e.g. disposable trash bags, my brain can't really internalize information like "10 microns thick", but actually seeing the process of making a big roll of plastic film and turning it into unending stream of bags made the relative amount of material involved intuitively comprehensible. Also, videos of industrial machines are relaxing to watch.)
- DanBC 6y ago
  > I raise this as a general point: I've never seen any good resources to help people estimate full environmental impact of disposable vs. reusable things, accounting both the difference of {emissions, energy, water, plastics} used in manufacturing of disposable vs. reusable item, and then the difference of those in ongoing maintenance. It's a very good point. This kind of stuff is impossible for the lay person to estimate. Here's one example for nappies. It's 37 pages long. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291130/scho0808boir-e-e.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- azornathogron 6y ago
  > It's important we learn to figure this out as consumers, because I fear otherwise our civilization will die on lots of bad decisions driven by not knowing the total costs I don't think it is feasible to figure these things out as a consumer in any way that scales to the range of products that we use, changes in manufacturing and materials over time, and the available attention that each consumer can dedicate to the problem. I would like to see more externalities incorporated into the price of goods, via taxes or other market intervention. Of course, that's hideously difficult as well, but I feel it's closer to being feasible than consumers estimating externalities of each product themselves. (Probably we need both approaches, and more besides.) Edit: a good thing about incorporating externalities into prices is that to a large extent it should naturally aggregate through the whole production/supply chain. If plastic is a problem and you tax plastic feed-stock (probably someone who knows about plastic manufacture would have a better suggestion, sorry), then that naturally will be incorporated into the price of everything made out of plastic, proportionately to the amount of plastic the thing required.