Over the moon (cup)

Warning: we're about to discuss menstrual products, people of a nervous disposition may want to skip this post.

Tampons. They're pretty horrible things.

• They take six months to biodegrade (pads, with their plastic backing, last forever) - imagine them hanging around in landfill sites and sewage treatment farms, or more worryingly in the sea.
  
• 70% of sewage system blockages are due to sanitary waste (source: Woman's environmental network), and once sanitary waste gets to the sea it can really mess up marine life (Beachwatch). When Beachwatch carried out their 2001 survey, they found more than 14 towels/pantliners and four tampon applicators per kilometre of beach.
  
• They're expensive: in 2001 we spent £370 million on them (source: WEN's Seeing Red), approx. £20 each a year.
• We get through a lot of them: 12,000 in the average woman's lifetime (Seeing Red)
  
• They contain chemicals (from pesticides to bleach), and can cause Toxic Shock Syndrome (rare)
  
• They smell, and leak, and you have to remember to buy them and carry them around.
• And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty fed up with the woman-in-white-jeans-rollerblading-along-the-beach ads.

Anyway, I haven't yet been able to find any data on the carbon emissions of manufacturing, distributing and disposing tampons but I will keep looking. But I think it is safe to say if we can get rid of tampons, we'll be saving carbon emissions.

So, I've just started using the Mooncup - a small cup of made of industrial grade silicone which you wear inside you. It catches menstrual discharge and is reusable - should last for years. And it brilliant - last week, I went on two runs, swam, spent an hour in a jacuzzi and 8 hours on a plane, and I've never been more confident that I wasn't going to leak. And it's great that you don't need to carry anything with you, and don't need to change it as often. It's undetectable, you can't feel it when it is in position, and you quickly get the hang of removing and inserting it.

You can buy them from Boots (or other stockists) or direct from their website, which I used and it delivered in days. They are £18.99 which is a bargain when you think that wouldn't buy 10 packs of tampons.



10 year's worth of tampons, or one Mooncup (pictured is the Keeper, the rubber alternative to the Mooncup)