Sustainable periods 2 | Zöldövezet Társulás

Start!

Our SUstainable PERiods 2 project started on the 11th of June with an online kick-off meeting. With a brilliant brainstorming with our partners led us to set the goals of the project:

do research in the participating countries to collect reliable data about the prevalence of reusable menstruation products and about beliefs, fears, misconceptions etc. around the topics
creating a webinar in all countries based on the results of the survey to give answers to the doubts above,
holding workshops with the use of our existing training materials
introduction of Sustainable period products among young women at Festivals
creating new educational games to raise awareness about the importance of sustainable periods
communicational campaign to share the results of the outputs.

Why?

Menstruation is still taboo, single-use menstrual products are polluting and harmful to health. The most commonly used disposable menstrual product is the pad, of which 90% is plastic. Equivalent with single-use plastics, which take ca. 500 years to break down. A menstruating woman uses between 5000-15000 menstrual products in her lifetime. In the 28 EU Member States, in 2017 49 billion units of single-use menstrual products were used, which meant 590000t of waste. The issue with these products is not only their environmental, but also their health impact. They can contain up to 3900 different chemicals, which research has shown can cause skin irritation, infertility, cancer etc. Currently, in the EU, companies are not obliged to specify what substances are used to make their products. In V4 countries and Ukraine, economic aspect is also important, and menstrual products are defined as luxury products, which cause economic problems for many women and families.

Reusable menstrual products can be a solution. However, lack of awareness concerning the various impacts (environmental, health, economical) of disposable menstrual products is one crucial barrier to the use of reusable products. Furthermore, in the V4 countries and Ukraine there is a strong taboo on menstruation, which makes it difficult to promote information on products and thus consume them consciously. The Sustainable periods 2 project aims to change that. Information about the first Sustainable period project is available here.