It takes a lot to surprise me but I have to say I was gob-smacked…
Brenda and Katryna from Freedom Products
One day, I was talking to my girlfriend Katryna from America about my period and feminine hygiene products. She casually mentioned she still had her period but didn’t use tampons or pads. “What do you do then?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face. She said she’d used a cup for the last three years. “A what?” I asked her. “A menstrual cup – do you want me to show you mine?” she said.
She proceeded to present me with a small silicone cup and explained how it was folded and inserted, “it then opens to collect your flow and you just empty it out, rinse and reinsert it and you can reuse it for up to 10 years”. She said there is a learning curve with using one, as there was when women start to use tampons, but now she’d never consider going back to using a tampon or pad.
“Sounds easy enough,” I thought, but I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of them before. She’d been using one for three years so I jumped on the Internet as soon as I got home to do some research.
It turns out that over our lifetime, we use an astounding amount of tampons and pads. It’s estimated that if a women menstruates for five day and uses 5 disposable products a day, that equates to 25 per cycle, 300 a year and over 11,000 in her lifetime. Multiply that by all the menstruating women in the world and hundreds of millions of throwaway feminine hygiene products are being used. Not to mention the packaging of all those individually wrapped tampons and pads. I know I should have given it some consideration but it’s something I had never really thought about before – I simply wasn’t aware that there were any other options available to me!
These used tampons and pads contribute greatly to our landfill and take a considerable amount of time to biodegrade. They can also end up in our waterways, oceans and on beaches, are potentially harmful to our wildlife and negatively affect our future influence on the planet.
The other major impact these disposable products have on our environment is pollution from the production process: pesticides and insecticides that are used when growing cotton, bleaching of cotton, packaging and transport.
So there are obviously huge environmental benefits to using a reusable cup but there are also great health benefits. There is no risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) associated with menstrual cups as the menstrual flow is collected rather than absorbed. Menstrual cups also allow the vagina to maintain it’s natural pH balance and don’t dry out the vagina like tampons do.
You save yourself a lot of money too. No more having to spend on expensive disposable products, as a cup can last for up to 10 years.
Menstrual cups have actually been around for some time with the first recorded patent in the 1930’s. Unfortunately cups fell out of favor with the advent of ‘convenient’ disposable products. Other factors leading to the demise of cups were a lack of safe materials and the perception that menstruation was ‘unclean’ or ‘messy’. Menstrual cups are however enjoying resurgence amongst women who are comfortable with their bodies and those that care about the environment.
So, if they really were such a great product, I still wondered why I hadn’t heard of them here in Australia. Were we a society that just wasn’t receptive to them?
After further research, I found out about the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which regulates menstrual cups in Australia. This is good in that these ‘devices’ are stringently assessed and deemed safe to use.
There is however a cost associated with gaining TGA approval. One would think this cost wouldn’t be prohibitive to a large feminine hygiene products manufacturer however there is a lot more profit to be made when women return month after month. Menstrual cup manufacturers tend to be small businesses, started by women who really do care about the environment. Freedom Products, the manufacturer of JuJu, is one such company.
My girlfriend Katryna and I formed Freedom Products as where eager to provide Australian women with this wonderful feminine hygiene alternative. We did extensive research and consulted ergonomists and leading product designers in the making of JuJu to ensure the best possible comfort, ease of use and cleaning. JuJu is made in Australia from medical grade-silicone, which is safe for use in the human body and has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration of Australia.
Menstrual cups are eco-friendly, convenient, safe and cost effective, making it easy for us all to do our bit, every month, to reduce our environmental footprint and contribute to a greener, cleaner Australia.
Make the switch today!
xx Brenda from JuJu.
