Mitigate whilst you Menstruate: Landfill & Leaching

Earlier blog posts have explored plastic production and use in disposable menstrual products and how their subsequent pollution is affecting marine environments around the world. Today, we will identify how this waste is contributing to climate change.

Every day people buy their monthly essentials whether it be a box of tampons, pads or even their favourite extra-large tub of ice cream. All of these items contain single-use plastic components and as such, each has their own contribution to climate change. Once you’ve used your disposable menstruation product of choice, it will usually be discreetly discarded in the bin, thrown out and then taken to landfill.

Landfills are the third largest anthropogenic source of methane emissions in the United States accounting for 20.2% of total methane emissions in 2014. [1] This alone sounds concerning, but when you consider that methane has, per mole, a global warming potential 3.7 times that of carbon dioxide [2] it becomes astounding. For those of you who don’t know, greenhouse gases originating from human activity is now the biggest driver of climate change! [3]

As well as contributing to climate change, plastic can release chemicals into our environment and our bodies endangering both ourselves and wildlife. A study [4] found that almost all commercially available plastics leached chemicals, even those advertised as BPA free. The worrying aspect of these chemicals? They were all found to have estrogenic activity, which is known to cause many adverse health effects. For example, another study [5] identified that 60-100% of male fish collected in National Wildlife Refuges were intersex, growing eggs in their testes. This has been attributed to chemicals, such as those leaching from plastics, being found in waterbodies.

But it’s not all bad news! The key message of our ‘Mitigate whilst you Menstruate’ week is that this is all avoidable! Signing up to our pledge to try a reusable menstrual cup will reduce your plastic consumption and contribution to waste. As well as lasting up to a decade (!!), menstrual cups are made out of medical grade silicone, which is designed to decompose back to a type of sand [6].

Join our pledge to be green. period.

1. EPA (2016) https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2017-04/documents/us-ghg-inventory-2016-chapter-executive-summary.pdf

2. Lashof and Thuja (1990) Nature 344, 529–531

3. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2013) www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1.

4. Yang et al (2011) https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1003220/

5. Iwanowicz et al (2016) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651315301093

6. Macphail and Brook (2017) http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/gc/c7gc02088k/unauth#!divAbstract