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