“Do you know why disposable sanitary pads are shiny white?” asks Shradha Shreejaya, in her characteristic candour. “It’s because manufacturers bleach the pads!” comes her reply. That’s rather perturbing. How many of us have bothered to find out what exactly goes into a product that many women use so frequently, so intimately? “The truth hits hard, doesn’t it? Most women know the hassle of trying to dispose these non-biodegradable napkins but how many of them realise that they are an environmental hazard and that they are also chock-full of plastic and toxins that are harmful to the body?” questions the city-based youngster, the ‘founding campaigner’ for Sustainable Menstruation Kerala Collective. It’s an alliance of like-minded people, among them campaigners, civil society groups, activists, professionals, students, organisations and manufacturers of sustainable menstrual hygiene products, collectively pioneering efforts to get talking about all things menstruation. “Our aim is to make the sustainability aspects of menstruation a reality,” says the green warrior of a different kind.
Shradha has just returned from taking a session on sustainable menstrual hygiene practises to a bunch of women from the fishing community in Poonthura, a coastal hamlet in Thiruvananthapuram, one of the many awareness sessions she and the Collective have been organising all over the state on a regular basis.
“Contrary to perception, everywhere I go I find that women are just relived that they can talk about menstruation out in the open. PMS is like a sisterhood that brings everyone together! Admittedly, they start listening because they patronise you. Then you hit them with the hard questions and they start opening up. There’s definitely a lack of awareness, given that six out of 10 women in the country have access to disposable sanitary napkins. You tell them about the harm that these plastics are doing and the women cotton on pretty quickly, especially when you show them alternative menstrual hygiene products such as silicone menstrual cups and reusable cotton sanitary pads. Of course, you’ve got to practise what you preach as well,” explains Shradha. “Actually, indifference of users in urban areas is more difficult to work with and more challenging than ignorance,” she adds.
It was while she was attending a climate reality project in Delhi, while she was a student of ecology and environmental studies at Pondicherry University, that she first got interested in menstrual hygiene management. “I met Arpita of The Kachra Project and Aurovillian zero-waste expert Bindu Mohanty and became involved in ‘Period of Change,’ the first major campaign on sustainable menstruation in India. I was handling the social media aspects of the campaign and helped compile and collate information for it. After moving back home to Thiruvananthapuram, last year, I started looking into alternative menstrual hygiene practices in Kerala,” says Shradha, 27, who was also, until recently, working on zero-waste management proposals, on behalf of a local NGO.
Shradha Shreejaya educates people about sustainable menstruation
The state, it seems, has become the prime location for interventions on menstrual hygiene management (MHM). Kerala has seen amazing dialogues on menstruation and busting taboos in the year we left behind. Groups like The Red Cycle, Thanal, Haiku, CodeRed and Happy To Bleed campaign have stepped forth to not bleed in silence , she had posted on the Collective’s Facebook page, following their successful Women’s Day ‘Celebrate Menstruation’ event in Thiruvananthapuram.
“Arjun Unnikrishnan of Red Cycle has been doing an amazing job with creating awareness in Kozhikode and surrounding districts. The ladies of Code Red from NUALS have been tirelessly working to make alternative menstrual hygiene products available to girls and women in orphanages in Kochi. Thrissur has become the centre for manufacture of reusable sanitary pads. Believe it or not, Malappuram, Kasaragod and Kannur are reported to be the biggest markets for menstrual cups and cloth pads in the state... Kerala has unknowingly become the champion for MHM. It’s mainly because the current government has a zero-waste policy in place plus there are pro-active officials, for example Thiruvananthapuram’s deputy mayor Rakhi Ravikumar, which make implementation easier. Moreover, civil society groups are much more informed. They are able to learn more about the ground realities and limitations of using alternative menstrual hygiene products and intervene more constructively,” she explains.
Apart from creating awareness about MHM, Shradha’s role is to bridge the gap between science and academics and policy for NGOs and civil society groups, to aid in implementation.
She also has plans to work with Video Volunteers, a Goa-based group that works to create community correspondents, to go into communities and compile the menstrual stories of women across the country. She was also part of the team that created an action plan for a zero waste model just for sanitary disposal for the Centre for Development Studies, a first of its kind initiative an institutional set-up in the country. Be positive, period.
Spearheading change
‘Celebrate Menstruation,’ a day-long festival on menstruation, held in Thiruvananthapuram, this past Women’s Day was Sustainable Menstruation Kerala Collective’s first such campaign and, reportedly, the first one of its kind in the country. “It was a huge success where we had stalls and seminars and films screenings and it went a long way in getting the word out there about menstrual hygiene management. An eye-opener was that a lot of men also took an interest in it; one of the highlights was when a young man asked us if it was a good idea to gift his fiancée a menstrual cup!”
