In a move that will go a long way in better menstrual hygiene management in the country, the Centre has decided to make it mandatory upon the sanitary napkins manufacturing firms to provide bio-degradable disposal bags too from January next year.
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Sunday said at an event at Pune on the occasion of International Women's Day on Sunday, “I have observed that despite repeated appeal to sanitary pad manufacturers, they are still not providing bio-degradable disposal bags. From January, 2021, the Union government will make such bags mandatory.”
The move follows concerns that while manufacturers of sanitary napkins take no responsibility for their product or its appropriate disposal, sanitary waste is disposed with household waste, and pickers often handle it with bare hands, to the detriment of their health and well-being. Disposable bags will help better sorting out the soiled pads from the waste and their better disposal.
Thrown in open, landfill sites and drains, many times, animals like cows and dogs too eat them up, almost killing themselves as the plastic in the pads chokes their stomach while drainage system gets blocked. Welcoming the Government's move to ensure that sanitary pad makers provide disposable bags too, Jagdish Kaur, President of the not-for-profit NGO, WILGA (Women's Initiative for Liberation, Growth and Action ) asserted that “focus should be also on manufacture of the eco-friendly and reusable pads to save the environment.”
She felt that a plastic and industrially manufactured sanitary pad requires about 500 to 800 years to decompose, thus posing environment hazards. “These are usually dumped in landfills, thrown in open spaces and ponds or drains thus choking the drainage system. Instead, focus should be on manufacturing reusable pads whose total costs are quite low as compared to the cost of synthetic disposable pads used in a year,” she said.
Sanfe, IIT Delhi-incubated startup has already initiated in this direction. It has forayed into the sanitary napkins segment with the launch of reusable sanitary pads, made with composite banana fiber, which can last upto two years (around 120 washes). Sanfe Reusable Pad is developed by Archit Agarwaland Harry Sehrawat, based on inputs from several IIT Delhi professors.
“The reusable pads are ultra-thin and are highly absorbent with Quadrant True Lock Technology which makes the pad leakproof and avoids creating any rashes. A patent has also been filed for the design. A pack of two pads is priced at Rs. 199,” according to the representatives from the Startup.