Between Us and Sustainable Energy

 A friend of mine, way back in sixth grade, asked me, “Why don’t we just use solar power for

everything? It’s available everywhere if you think about it.” And that really did get me thinking,

why do we not use clean energy for everything. So, like any good future humanities student, to

answer my question I started reading about clean energy, this led me to find out that the

solution is not that simple. Today, almost six years after my friend's ingenious yet impractical

suggestion, the use of clean energy is something I am passionate about.

To implement any solution, first, we have to recognise the hurdles that stand in its way, and

these are some, I believe, that stand in the way of clean energy being used on a global

scale.

I believe that the problem of not using sustainable fuels continues because of its expensive

nature and the convenience of fossil fuels. To counteract this, governments ought to increase

their spending on research for clean energy.

Another reason is that we simply haven't found a perfect clean fuel. Many sectors, like the

transport sector, need fossil fuels because of their high energy density. Petrol contains about 40

times more energy than the most advanced battery (when both are of equal weight).

Certain industrial processes, like the manufacturing of glass, steel, cement, etc., need extremely

high temperatures, which are extremely difficult and impractical to achieve without the use of

fossil fuels.

The top 100 companies produce about 71% of global emissions, so the profit-driven nature of

companies that use fossil fuels to cut costs is also a factor. Most stakeholders in oil and fossil

fuel companies are extremely influential, and this affects the policy decisions of governments

that are swayed by these tycoons.

Finally, there is the fact that for many people, on a personal level, clean energy is not a burning

priority (pun intended). About 771 million people live in extreme poverty. For them, putting food

on the table is much more important than assessing what fuel they use.

The lack of technological advancement in using clean energy in developing countries, combined

with the tendency of companies to set up fossil fuel-consuming industries in said countries,

forms a huge hurdle for making clean energy mainstream.

Does this mean that the dream of clean energy is hopeless? I, being the ever-optimistic person, say no. It is definitely not completely impossible for us to make the green change. I will follow up on this in a new blog!

Democracy Is The Best Form Of Government [For] - Debate Topic for Students

 

Why Democracy Is The Best Form Of Government

"Democracy is the destiny of humanity; freedom its indestructible arm."

-Benito Juarez

I am of the firm belief that democracy is the best form of government available to us right now. Why? Let's start with the basics.

Firstly, democracy allows us to exercise various freedoms, such as freedom of speech and expression, and the freedom to criticise one's own government. Democracy is the government of the people, this is perhaps its biggest and most widely known virtue. Allowing everyone to participate in the decision-making process, at least in theory.

Democracies tend to produce stronger systems of checks and balances, independent media, and rule of law than other governance systems. And these institutions yield the consistently positive results seen in democracies.

Mulligan, Gil, and Sala-i-Martin (2004) find that countries that are more democratic are less likely to execute, regulate religion, or censor the press.

Gallego (2010) presents evidence that democracy has indeed had a causal effect on primary-school enrollment.

 Baum and Lake (2001) find that democratization increased secondary-school enrollment. Also, Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson (2015) find that democracy is associated with an increase in secondary schooling.

Few autocratic countries enjoy child mortality rates under 10 per 1,000. In contrast, democracies often enjoy child mortality rates below 10 or even 5 per 1,000.

Here we have considered only child mortality, but a broader analysis of countries’ health outcomes would also show that more generally, good health is linked with political freedom. My source is the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

A review of the economic growth performances of all developing countries since 1960 finds democracies have, on average, attained rates of per capita GDP growth equivalent to their autocratic counterparts. This holds for each decade as well as in aggregate. There is no empirical evidence of an authoritarian growth advantage.

On nearly every social welfare measure available, democracies exhibit development outcomes that are 15-40% superior to that of autocracies, controlling for income.

Democratic countries tend to be wealthier and have a better distribution of wealth throughout the population.

Everything considered what truly helps democracy be the best form of government is the satisfaction of the people with it.

Over the twenty-eight countries examined happiness levels in democracies stayed robust, even when variables like religion, language, and of course, income, were controlled (Dorn, Fischer, et. al 2007). Incidentally, these particular findings are also supported by (Frey and Stutzer 2000), that household income to have a minimal effect on happiness, in contrast to the effect of direct democracy. 

Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." And I have to agree, democracy has many flaws and problems but it is still the best form of government compared to all others that have been tried over and over again.

Difficult conversations - The Red Lotus

 

Taboo and superstitious practices surrounding menstruation exist in India, that is a fact well known. But what I would have never guessed was that it was prevalent even in my community, a privileged and highly educated community! Back when The Red Lotus had just started, I was talking with a friend, who I will refer to as Priya (a pseudonym) here for the sake of her privacy, about how being a menstruator in rural parts of India can be very difficult, to which she replied that even she had had experiences with superstitious menstrual practices. I was quite shocked, I asked her if I could post a blog about this and agreed. So here is a short excerpt of my talk with Priya.
“I remember when I got my first period. My mom had asked me to stay in my room. I then thought that maybe she was just being considerate because I didn’t take her to be someone to put restrictions on me just because I was on my period. Ever since then, every time I’m on my period my mom asks me to limit my room and not to touch other family members’ things. I’m told to take a head bath before I do anything else on all days of my period. She also doesn’t like it when I enter the kitchen to help her out a little. This came to me as a surprise because even though I’ve heard stories of menstrual taboos being propagated, I never thought my family members would subject me to it. Especially when they are very open-minded otherwise. This put into perspective how normalised menstrual stigma is.”
“When I told them about me wanting to work with The Red Lotus, they were hesitant at first. They didn’t like the idea of me talking so openly about menstruation and the stigma surrounding it. It was a very difficult conversation to have but one that was the need of the hour. Why is it that the menstrual taboo is so rooted in our traditions?”
I have no answer for her question, but I do hope that Priya’s experience encourages other menstruators to have that much needed difficult conversation.

मैं Packets by The Red Lotus

 At my local sanitation plant, the workers are provided with a piece of functioning machinery for the proper disposal of sanitary napkins in an eco-friendly manner. Yet the machine sits in a little corner and collects dust, why is this so?

The disposal of sanitary pads is especially difficult, the addition of blood, used disposables become dangerous for a city corporation. They cannot be humanly handled by garbage collectors as they contain a cocktail of materials including cotton, a super-absorbent polymer, and a whole lot of plastic.

This is where the sanitary napkin destroyers come into play. The destroyer burns the sanitary napkins and reduces them into micro ash, which is collected in the inbuilt ash-tray. There is also an emission outlet at the top of the incinerator for pushing out the fumes developed during the incineration. These machines produce significantly lesser fumes and emissions than the average incinerator.

The machinery requires a certain quantity of pads as input to be operated safely. Unfortunately due to the unwillingness of menstruators in the residential area to segregate their waste and to properly wrap their pads/tampons in a newspaper, there aren’t enough pads to work the machine. If the workers wish to operate the machine they will need a significant amount of sanitary napkins, for which they’d need to segregate the waste by hand. This is incredibly unhygienic and poses a threat to the workers’ health.

Now, how do we plan to solve this problem?

The Red Lotus distributes sanitary napkin disposal packets called मैं packets, which are made of recycled newspaper. Currently, we’re producing it on a small scale, packets are handmade by sanitation workers. We also wanted to incorporate an element into these packets that would add to the normalization of periods. Therefore as mentioned before, we named these packets मैं packets. मैं means me in Hindi, symbolising the concept of individuality that comes about by accepting our menstrual cycles for what they are. Depending on the region, we change the label to say ‘’me’’ according to the local language. So in drives in Kochi, we wrote ഞാന്’, મને in Gujarat, and so on according to the region. However, to ensure that sanitation workers know that these packets contain pads at every level of the disposal process we are changing the label to make it more apparent that the packets contain menstrual waste. These packets are also biodegradable, so they can easily be disposed of using a biomedical incinerator, which is really the best way to dispose of pads and tampons. 

We want to provide a solution that is easy and efficient so that every menstruator is able to partake in this practice. We want these envelopes to become ubiquitous, and the only way one disposes of their menstrual waste.

Ishita Desai,
Founder
The Red Lotus

Our First Webinar - The Red Lotus

 Our First Webinar

With the sudden surge in COVID-19 cases, doing groundwork became difficult. Reaching out and visiting the sanitation plant is a danger to both their healths as well as ours. We originally focused more on tangible, hands-on projects than reaching out via social media. For some time we considered taking a break altogether, but we realised that difficult times call for new experiences. The Red Lotus conducted its very first webinar on 21st April 2021, in collaboration with The Rotaract Club of Ruia College, Mumbai.

Keeping our cause in mind, the topic of our webinar was Sustainable Menstruation. Like any first, the task was exciting and daunting at the same time. We researched more in-depth than we ever had and discovered some facts that even we were shocked to learn. For example, an average sanitary napkin is used for 5 hours at most, but the exact same napkin takes up to 43,80,000 hours to decompose. This is because by far the largest component of a DSN (disposable sanitary napkin) is plastic.

After compiling and condensing all our data into short digestible points, it was time to let our creative juices flow. Setting a theme, finding the most appealing format, and making an engrossing presentation in general, was quite the challenge. But after a lot of trial and error, and even more constructive criticism from our supporters, we finally made our best presentation. 

Now, came the most time-consuming part of this whole ordeal — the narration. While all three of us are fairly good at public speaking, none of us had any experience with doing it online. And let me tell you, speaking to an audience online is a whole other ball game than speaking to them in real life. Perhaps the internet connection can go haywire at any second, maybe you've been sharing the wrong tab this entire time, maybe you've been muted this entire time, or what if your background has that super embarrassing toy from when you were two? To cut it short, we were anxious. After practice after practice, we finally settled on a flow we were comfortable with.

And now, the day of reckoning, the day of our webinar. The three of us had a 30-minute motivation meeting and we were enthralled to get the show on the road. To say the webinar went well would be an understatement, the presentation went smoothly and the audience was ebullient. Ah, the fruit worked hardest for is always the sweetest. 

The webinar was a wonderful learning experience! Our second webinar, with Vanita Vibhag, was a success too. 

We, at The Red Lotus, are definitely looking forward to holding another webinar very soon. Hope we see you then!

Ishita Desai,

Co-founder

The Red Lotus

The Red Lotus Project Instagram

The Red Lotus Project Website made by me.

The Red Lotus Project Facebook

The Red Lotus Project Blog run by me.

The Red Lotus Project

Introduction to the project

My school had assigned us a project about plastic disposal, this was before the pandemic broke out, so I and my project partners decided to visit the local sanitation plant.

This picture was taken by my friends and me at the waste disposal facility in our locality.  There we talked to the workers and found out that while people do segregate wet and dry waste, they don't properly dispose of their used menstrual product...

 

Living in a progressive and well-educated society, although we certainly weren't unaware of the societal stigma surrounding menstruation, we were still shocked to discover another side of this problem. Improper disposal of menstrual waste was a facet of the taboo surrounding menstruation we had never thought of. It was after this visit that we realized how deep-rooted the disposal of menstrual products truly is. 

The sanitation workers had pitiful accounts about how, while being given the necessary equipment to carry out the segregation process in a healthy way, they are simply not able to do so due to the callousness of the residents. We were informed about how they have a proper machine to dispose of sanitary pads, but due to the unwillingness of menstruators to properly wrap their pads/tampons in a newspaper, they are not able to make use of it. Thus, it is all collectively incinerated, the consequences of which are environmental pollution. 

The experience was eye-opening. I can only imagine that if this prevails in a literate, educated society, what the situation must be in parts of rural India. I and my friends wanted to change the situation of the workers for the better. 

So, we started The Red Lotus Project, a project aimed at spreading awareness about the proper disposal of menstrual waste and destigmatizing menstruation. I, Ishita Desai, am a co-founder of it.

 The project mainly focuses on encouraging women to wrap their sanitary napkins properly, and ensuring that the sanitation workers are equipped with all necessary implements to carry out the segregation.

This is the first step in many to come.
Be sure to follow us on our socials to join us on our journey to make change one woman at a time!

The Red Lotus Project Instagram

The Red Lotus Project Website run by me.

The Red Lotus Project Facebook

The Red Lotus Project Blog run by me.

Sanitary Waste Disposal

What is it and why we need to act now

-Ishita Desai

While there is no question of the importance of raising awareness about menstrual health and hygiene, there is always a rebuttal to raise the issue of waste produced as a result of unhygienic sanitary napkin disposal. Both of these issues are part of our list of concerns and one cannot be ignored for the sake of the other.

It calls for an all-encompassing solution, because the current practise of disposing of menstrual hygiene products existing in India is only going to worsen the garbage situation in the future.

Approximately 200 tonnes of sanitary napkin waste is generated daily for a population of 350 million menstruating women in India, assuming that 35 percent of women regularly use sanitary napkins at an average of 8 pads per month.

Even when sanitary napkin disposal constitutes only less than 1% of the total amount of plastic waste produced, it does not amount to less than 25000 tonnes per day, which, due to its enormous size, is in no case inconsequential. It is therefore no mystery that we are in dire need of sustainable alternatives for disposing of sanitary pads in India.

Thanks to sustained effort at many tiers, the feminine hygiene industry is growing rapidly, but this is creating a detrimental effect on the waste management industry, where 85 per cent of the waste is not managed due to inadequate efforts by the public health department.

This advocates for a comprehensive examination of the sanitary napkin disposal methods. A trend is observed in the methodologies according to the area inhabited by the woman. Most women residing in metropolitan areas dispose of sanitary napkins in a dustbin that ultimately ends up in landfills, while rural women prefer to wash their napkins and dump them in a pit.

Methods of disposal are also heavily reliant as to whether the napkin was disposed of at home or at work/school. In public washrooms, often due to poor infrastructure, sanitary napkins are flushed or left in corners or in other open areas. Few other women actually burn discarded sanitary napkins. This scene certainly indicates making progress to educate the masses on how to dispose of sanitary pads at home is necessary.

The Indian Government's CPCB has set standards for the dumping of sanitary waste and has clarified the responsibility of all relevant parties in the disposal of the product. Strongly advised methods for disposing of sanitary napkins vary depending on the area. For example, in rural areas low-cost incinerators are used and sanitary napkins are produced preferably without SAP. Electric incinerators are used in rural or urban setups. Some other methods are:

1. High temperature incinerator for bio-waste – Urban setup with central collection and disposal with other bio waste.

2. Deep burial – Rural setup – Compostable materials only

3. Composting – Compost site – Compostable materials only

4. Pit burning – Rural area


Per the regulations, waste can be disposed of by incineration or by disposal in landfills. Both of which are entirely feasible, and have to be applied consistently throughout all stages. In particular on rural fronts, the necessary facilities and infrastructure should really be made accessible. While these techniques sound perfect, they also have their very own challenges.

In general, incineration may not be the recommended approach, since carbon contained in fossil fuels is released to the atmosphere among other pollutants, whereas ground filling is a significant cause of waste and plastics have not been degraded for many years. We therefore ought to find alternative ways to manage our sanitary napkin waste either by storing it or using environmentally friendly items.

Though solutions such as recycling and composting exist, the handling of used sanitary napkins continues to be an issue across India since these processes have still not been widely accepted. There are, however, a few actions that a person may take to support the cause.

When one lives in an urban area, the best way of disposing of any kind of sanitary napkins will be to incinerate in a central incineration plant which are used by hospitals to dispose of sanitary and bio-waste. One must explore and locate the nearest central incineration device in their town. In order for this system to be successful, the separation of sanitary waste at person level, the processing at community scale and incineration at central incineration facilities will be necessary.

When one of them disposes of another waste in a garbage bin, the least they can do is cover the used sanitary napkin in a plastic wrapper supplied by most of the pad companies. This is vital to the hygiene and welfare of waste collectors.

In rural communities in which there is a shortage of segregation, incineration, as indicated by CPCB, will be the safest choice. Low-cost manual incinerators or electrical incinerators should be used for this function. This, as we can all bear in mind, will not solve the problem, it can only manage it better. There is space for a lot of progress in the future.

As customers are more mindful of the environmental effects and continue to make responsible buying choices, some companies have taken advantage of that fact either by falsely stating that their goods are environmentally conscious or by misleading consumers with words that they do not fully comprehend. Therefore, the few that pretend to be organic sanitary pad producers must be cross-checked.


The need for an hour is knowledge, understanding and availability of environmentally sustainable practises when it comes to treating menstrual waste effectively. When that's taken care of, it'll be easy for us to make a green change.