-Down to Earth Around 88% respondents want to switch to less-polluting alternatives but report they are not easily available Around 12.3 billion sanitary napkins, amounting to 113,000 tonnes of waste, reached India’s landfills every year, according to a new study. Improper disposal and non-segregation from household waste leads to unhygienic working condition for waste workers, the report said. Commonly available sanitary napkins constitute 90 per cent plastic, the report claimed. India generates 3.3...

-The Hindu Two non-profit enterprises offer reusable cloth pads as a sustainable alternative to synthetic branded products Tiruchi: Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) is a hot topic these days. Whether in the form of stylishly advertised disposable sanitary products that vie with shampoos and vehicles for prime time viewership, or films on innovators who have created low-cost napkins, the taboo around the subject in India seems to be slowly disappearing — the operative...

-Down to Earth The report emphasises the need to normalise menstruation by looking at behaviour, infrastructure, politics and perception In an aim to make India open defecation-free by 2019, many aspects of sanitation have been undermined, such as usage, maintenance and water availability. A 2015 report by Dasra, a Mumbai-based philanthropy foundation and the Bank of America highlights another key aspect ignored when it comes to sanitation. According to the report based on data...

-The Hindu Several youth collectives in the State are campaigning to make menstruation a hygienic and normal experience for women Her eyes welled over with pain. A victim in her own body, She crawled into a corner, bleeding. ‘Don’t talk about it’, she was told. Haiku #40 by Saurav Harigovind, MES Medical College Don’t. Don’t is the first lesson that a girl newly inducted to womanhood learns. Do not let anyone know that you bleed, especially men....

-The Hindu An online community is prodding women to adopt eco-friendly methods such as reusable cloth pads and menstrualcups and reverse the reliance on the feminine hygiene product Remember the popular sanitary napkin advertisement that urged menstruating women to “touch the pickle”? While ad campaigns in the 1990s had a role in breaking certain taboos around menstruation, they also pushed a whole generation of adolescents into adopting sanitary napkins. Sanitary waste has...