Sustainable Menstruation: Women's Relationship with Their Periods and the Environment | Papers Environmental Science

April 2007

Periods and Question Marks [very clever title!]

How can women have an environmentally [?] sustainable relationship with their periods? [Good question, but

“relationship” seems a bit odd. If the question is about the environment, isn’t the relationship in question between women

and the environment?] I have never heard this question posed explicitly, but I think it’s one that most women address

implicitly. I didn’t ask it explicitly until a year ago, when I realized there was more than one way to deal with

menstruation. But the first step in answering this question is to determine what sustainability means in this context. I see it

as having two parts here: one concerning the environment, one concerning women. From an environmental perspective,

Sustainability means that the products women use to manage their periods inflict minimal harm on the environment in both

their creation and their disposal [good definition]; in the long term, woman should be able to use these products forever

without depleting the materials they come from or causing irreversible environmental damage [women exist “forever” (at

least as long as the species exists) whereas each woman does not]. So products that use renewable, reusable, and

biodegradable materials are preferable to those that use nonrenewable, disposable, and enduring materials. From a human

perspective, Sustainability also means, however, that women maintain a cooperative, rather than an antagonistic, attitude

toward menstruation. To dread something that occupies a quarter or so of our lives for thirty-five years is psychologically,

[culturally?] unsustainable, especially when the source of dread comes from our own bodies. Can we find a way to address

both these problems? [This is an intriguing premise, but you need to go a bit further in defining precisely what you mean in

terms of this second kind of sustainability. It is not clear to me what “cooperation” means in this context. I think you may

be getting at some sort of alienation between women and their bodies that is related to and reflected in or paralleled by the

environmental unsustainability. This requires explanation.]

First let us establish that there is, in fact, an environmental problem. As a stroll down the politely-named

“feminine hygiene” aisle of any drug store will show, by far the most common menstrual products are tampons and pads

(formally known as “sanitary napkins”). So how much environmental harm do these products cause? Amory Lovins

establishes this equation to measure energy-related harm1:

harm = population  stuff per person  material throughput per unit of stuff  energy use per unit of throughput 

impact of energy use

Since my [? Not clear who is included in “our”] focus is on material harm, the first three factors of the equation are the

relevant ones. In this case, we have an ever-expanding population, about half of whom are women [not clear what parts of

population you are considering here – only U.S. women?]. If each woman of menstruating age—between approximately

twelve and fifty years—uses several pads or tampons a day for about a quarter of each year (one week in every four), we

don’t need exact calculations to tell us the “stuff per person” factor is huge. (Of course, not every woman uses pads and

tampons, particularly in the non-Western world, but I’m oversimplifying for the sake of the calculation [ok].)

It is in the third factor, material throughput per unit of stuff, that environmental harm really becomes apparent.

Lovins says that the amount of resource flow needed to maintain a given stock depends on three factors: “how long

products last, what they are made of, and whether such techniques as minimum-materials design, manufacturing with

resource-sparing technologies, and scrap recovery are used.” According the website of Kotex, one of the leading sellers of

pads and tampons, pads are made of wood cellulose fibers and plastic such as polypropylene or polyethylene, and tampons

are made of cotton and rayon with a polypropylene cover2. Both pads and tampons are bleached. As we see when we

evaluate them using Lovins’s three measures, these products are resource-heavy. Each pad or tampon endures only a few

hours of use, but the plastics they contain will remain, essentially forever, in a landfill somewhere. They epitomize so-

called “disposable” products that are really not disposable, because all materials on our planet remain here (barring

launching them into outer space, that is). The products are also made of resource-heavy materials. Rayon, though made

from cellulose, undergoes a multi-step, environmentally damaging production process involving chemical exposures and

acid baths. The plastics, as petroleum products, are made from nonrenewable resources. In mainstream menstrual

products, even the cotton is grown using pesticides. The bleaching process, which has no practical use, adds more

chemicals to the equation. And to my knowledge, nothing is reused or recycled. Every term in the first half of Lovins’s

equation multiplies the environmental harm these products do. [Excellent discussion here]

David Orr talks about how architecture teaches implicit lessons3. One building in particular, he says, teaches

people that location is unimportant (because it is irrelevant to the building), energy cheap and abundant (because the

building uses it wastefully), and disconnectedness normal (because the building provides no information on its construction

or materials). If architecture is pedagogy, design in general may be pedagogy, too. Pads and tampons tell us that the

1 Lovins, A. 1989. How not to parachute more cats. Rocky Mountain Institute report: 100-117.

2 Kotex. Products Q&A. http://www.kotex.com/na/products/qaProducts.asp

3 Orr, D. 1997. Architecture as pedagogy II. Pages 597-600 in Conservation Biology 11.

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April 2007 Periods and Question Marks [very clever title!] How can women have an environmentally [?] sustainable relationship with their periods? [Good question, but “relationship” seems a bit odd. If the question is about the environment, isn’t the relationship in question between women and the environment?] I have never heard this question posed explicitly, but I think it’s one that most women address implicitly. I didn’t ask it explicitly until a year ago, when I realized there was more than one way to deal with menstruation. But the first step in answering this question is to determine what sustainability means in this context. I see it as having two parts here: one concerning the environment, one concerning women. From an environmental perspective, Sustainability means that the products women use to manage their periods inflict minimal harm on the environment in both their creation and their disposal [good definition]; in the long term, woman should be able to use these products forever without depleting the materials they come from or causing irreversible environmental damage [women exist “forever” (at least as long as the species exists) whereas each woman does not]. So products that use renewable, reusable, and biodegradable materials are preferable to those that use nonrenewable, disposable, and enduring materials. From a human perspective, Sustainability also means, however, that women maintain a cooperative, rather than an antagonistic, attitude toward menstruation. To dread something that occupies a quarter or so of our lives for thirty-five years is psychologically, [culturally?] unsustainable, especially when the source of dread comes from our own bodies. Can we find a way to address both these problems? [This is an intriguing premise, but you need to go a bit further in defining precisely what you mean in terms of this second kind of sustainability. It is not clear to me what “cooperation” means in this context. I think you may be getting at some sort of alienation between women and their bodies that is related to and reflected in or paralleled by the environmental unsustainability. This requires explanation.] First let us establish that there is, in fact, an environmental problem. As a stroll down the politely-named “feminine hygiene” aisle of any drug store will show, by far the most common menstrual products are tampons and pads (formally known as “sanitary napkins”). So how much environmental harm do these products cause? Amory Lovins establishes this equation to measure energy-related harm^1 : harm = population  stuff per person  material throughput per unit of stuff  energy use per unit of throughput  impact of energy use Since my [? Not clear who is included in “our”] focus is on material harm, the first three factors of the equation are the relevant ones. In this case, we have an ever-expanding population, about half of whom are women [not clear what parts of population you are considering here – only U.S. women?]. If each woman of menstruating age—between approximately twelve and fifty years—uses several pads or tampons a day for about a quarter of each year (one week in every four), we don’t need exact calculations to tell us the “stuff per person” factor is huge. (Of course, not every woman uses pads and tampons, particularly in the non-Western world, but I’m oversimplifying for the sake of the calculation [ok].) It is in the third factor, material throughput per unit of stuff, that environmental harm really becomes apparent. Lovins says that the amount of resource flow needed to maintain a given stock depends on three factors: “how long products last, what they are made of, and whether such techniques as minimum-materials design, manufacturing with resource-sparing technologies, and scrap recovery are used.” According the website of Kotex, one of the leading sellers of pads and tampons, pads are made of wood cellulose fibers and plastic such as polypropylene or polyethylene, and tampons are made of cotton and rayon with a polypropylene cover^2. Both pads and tampons are bleached. As we see when we evaluate them using Lovins’s three measures, these products are resource-heavy. Each pad or tampon endures only a few hours of use, but the plastics they contain will remain, essentially forever, in a landfill somewhere. They epitomize so- called “disposable” products that are really not disposable, because all materials on our planet remain here (barring launching them into outer space, that is). The products are also made of resource-heavy materials. Rayon, though made from cellulose, undergoes a multi-step, environmentally damaging production process involving chemical exposures and acid baths. The plastics, as petroleum products, are made from nonrenewable resources. In mainstream menstrual products, even the cotton is grown using pesticides. The bleaching process, which has no practical use, adds more chemicals to the equation. And to my knowledge, nothing is reused or recycled. Every term in the first half of Lovins’s equation multiplies the environmental harm these products do. [Excellent discussion here] David Orr talks about how architecture teaches implicit lessons^3. One building in particular, he says, teaches people that location is unimportant (because it is irrelevant to the building), energy cheap and abundant (because the building uses it wastefully), and disconnectedness normal (because the building provides no information on its construction or materials). If architecture is pedagogy, design in general may be pedagogy, too. Pads and tampons tell us that the (^1) Lovins, A. 1989. How not to parachute more cats. Rocky Mountain Institute report: 100-117. (^2) Kotex. Products Q&A. http://www.kotex.com/na/products/qaProducts.asp (^3) Orr, D. 1997. Architecture as pedagogy II. Pages 597-600 in Conservation Biology 11.

resources used to make them are cheap, plentiful, and can last us forever. They tell us that we may throw away as much cotton, plastic, and rayon as we like, without consequence. The multitude of different products with various features (applicators, wings, scents, and so on) tells women that we need specialized technology to help us manage our periods. [Excellent analogy – indeed there are implicit lessons embodied in all of our technologies. Seems like you might also draw on Langdon Winner here] So are there products that teach better lessons—that do not cause so much environmental harm? It turns out there are several. I asked myself this question about a year ago, when my friends and I began discussing the problems with pads and tampons. I had never really thought about it before, mainly because I didn’t realize I had choices. Once I did think about it, though, I started exploring other options. The first alternatives I found were organic, chlorine-free pads and tampons in recyclable and recycled packages. While these are certainly an environmental improvement, they still teach that we may throw the products away and feel good about the fact that we can recycle the box they come in; they still create a lot of waste. Sea sponges present a reusable alternative to tampons. They can be used like tampons, boiled to disinfect them, and last four to eight cycles. They obviously do not need processing. They therefore solve some of the problems of mainstream and alternative pads and tampons, although they are not eternally reusable [but can’t one argue that no “product” in the biological cycle is indefinitely reusable without passing through the complete decomposition process]. And if every woman in the world started using sea sponges, we may have an over-harvesting problem. Reusable cloth pads are a third alternative. These can last for years and can be made out of a variety of natural or synthetic materials. Perhaps their only environmental disadvantage is that they have to be thoroughly and frequently washed. Unfortunately, though, I found them uncomfortable. Finally I found what seems to me a nearly perfect solution: reusable menstrual cups. These bell-shaped cups, made of silicone or natural rubber, are inserted like tampons but catch the flow rather than absorbing it. They last ten years, perhaps longer, and can be cleaned with soap and water. They come in a small cardboard box and have no other packaging. The silicone cups do have the disadvantage of being made from nonrenewable resources—but they don’t teach us that these resources may be used excessively or carelessly. I believe that this solution is the most sustainable of any I have found. But as I mentioned earlier, sustainability has a human component as well as an environmental component. In this case, a large—and, I believe, related—aspect of sustainability involves women’s attitudes toward their periods. Women often have a rather hostile relationship with menstruation. There may be some legitimate reasons for their hostility—some women have cramps or mood swings, for instance—but advertising and media certainly propagate the image of menstruation as an unqualified evil. Its most common nickname, after all, is “the Curse.” Advertising for its products abounds with euphemism and images of cleanliness and femininity: “ feminine hygiene,” “ sanitary napkins,” Kotex boxes emblazoned with flowers, pads and tampons bleached pristine white. All this emphasis seems like it protests too much; companies stress cleanliness and femininity precisely because women are worried that their periods make them dirty and unfeminine [now that’s an ironic thought]. (How paradoxical that something so tied to being a woman could feel unfeminine.) In fact, the assumption that women want to get rid of their periods has spawned a market for birth control pills that reduce or completely eliminate menstruation. Many women dislike the idea of stopping their periods, however, a fact the New York Times deemed newsworthy. “Rather than loathing their periods,” reads a recent article, “women evidently carry on complex love-hate relationships with them”^4. The assumption is clear: periods are problems; it is surprising that not all women want to eliminate them [not clear who you are implying assumes this]. I remember inventing elaborate codes with my friends in middle school for asking each other for a pad or tampon. We were too ashamed to talk about it in front of other people. How can women develop a cooperative, even affectionate, relationship with menstruation—and might it be related to developing a cooperative, affectionate relationship with the environment? [It is interesting to me how you anthropomorphize a biological process – relationship, hostility, affection – these are terms that generally apply to relationships between humans and other beings.] Wendell Berry, observing Americans’ opposition to nature, notes that “this opposition is ultimately destructive even of ourselves”^5. In this case, the way many women deal with their periods is directly destructive both of nature and of themselves. Vandana Shiva equates societies’ treatment of women with their treatment of nature^6. She talks about how patriarchal societies devalue the production of both and introduce new forms of domination over them under the guise of “progress” and “modernization.” I doubt that Shiva would be surprised that the most common methods of managing our periods—the only methods I knew of for years—are destructive to the environment [yes, there is a strong parallel here]. It is not unrelated, I think, that we are made to feel ashamed of our periods [who/what is it that generates this shame? It strikes me that this is worth exploring. For instance, perhaps an argument can be made that this is merely an effective means of marketing products. My guess is that it is much deeper than (^4) Saul, S. April 20, 2007. Pill that eliminates the period gets mixed reviews. New York Times, Health section, online edition. (^5) Berry, W. 1987. Getting along with nature. Pages 6-20 in Home Economics. North Point Press, New York. (^6) Shiva, V. 1994. Development, ecology, and women. Pages 281-288 in Staying Alive.

 Draws extensively (and correctly cites) readings used in class. Use at least three references from class readings. If you draw on other sources, be certain to cite these as well. (Note that neglecting to cite ideas or text that come from other sources is a violation of academic ethics and of the Oberlin honor code).  Considers aspects of both scientific and human dimensions of sustainability.  Writing is of high quality: logic is well organized; each paragraph contains a clear topic sentences; assertions and opinions are supported with evidence, conclusion draws together ideas and follows from essay; grammar is used correctly, references are appropriately cited, spelling and typographical errors are minimal.  Writing conforms to standards outlined in “ENVS101 Writing guidelines” (also linked on home page of website).

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