I have just discovered a new fact about America. Most American households do not throw their kitchen waste in the garbage bin; they throw it down their drains. An interesting contraption installed under the kitchen sink called the garbage disposal unit captures the food waste, shreds it into small pieces (less than 2mm) after which it passes into the plumbing. This is in contrast to cities in Asia where most water authorities instruct the people to scrape off all food particles from dishes and throw them in the garbage bin before washing the dishes.

Food Wate Disposer Photo: Designofkitchen.net

In the US, the rationale behind allowing food waste to become a part of the wastewater circuit is that it is a lesser evil than when it is a part of the solid waste circuit. Carrying food waste in trucks for disposal is fraught with public health and environmental risks, it is believed. If burned in waste-to-energy facilities, the high water content of food scraps does not allow it to generate much energy. If it is buried in landfills, it decomposes to generate methane gas which is a potent greenhouse gas.

On the other hand, when food waste is pulverised with water, the existing sewerage network can be used for transporting it into treatment plants, which are well-equipped to deal with organic solids. These can be converted to biosolids and used as fertilisers for soil. Advanced facilities can also recover methane for producing energy. According to one study, food waste produces three times as much biogas as municipal sewage sludge.

In Asian cities, the case for keeping food waste out of treatment plants is that the higher organic carbon load leads to a higher biological oxygen demand which in turn leads to a higher consumption of oxygen. This increases the cost of aeration. More sludge is produced. Treatment plants in Asia are already struggling to meet the needs of millions and cannot be saddled with the load of food waste. Besides, it also contributes to eutrophication and toxicity of water bodies. But by far, the best solution even in an urban set-up, which is only being carried out by some environment-conscious individuals is composting at household level. Composting helps to turn food waste into rich soil, which can be used for gardening and farming. Done at household level, it helps to reduce the volume of garbage to be disposed by municipal authorities as well as the load on municipal treatment plants. Also, the release of methane gas from landfills is avoided.

Unfortunately, not much is being done by authorities to disseminate information about composting, and it does not feature as a waste management strategy in most countries. There is a lack of specific targets and economic instruments to drive waste minimisation. The centralised collection of wastes as well as wastewater has become a way of urban life and the authorities are not interested in thinking out of the box. And yet, it has been demonstrated that composting can be done even in apartments. With food waste forming 10 to 20% of solid wastes in many countries, it is time to take a fresh look at its disposal. Composting is a skill that needs to be taught in schools. Enough waste has been wasted.

About the Author

Sahana Singh is Editor of Asian Water, Asia’s leading trade magazine on  water and wastewater. She is the recipient of Developing Asia Journalism  Award, 2008. Currently based in the US, she continues to write on water related articles in the Asian context.

Further links you may be interested in:

EWTT: Part 1: How to compost at home – using container pots

EWTT:  Part 2: How to compost at home : Using the Daily Dump

EWTT:  Poonam Bir Kasturi: Designing the Daily Dump

Youtube: Water cycle video by Sahana Singh which won the first prize at the Urban Water Movie Contest organised by Holland’s Delft University of Technology:

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It is considered admirable when people pick-up litter and discard their own trash.  Clean cities and homes are considered progressive and inviting.  We are frequently admonished to “dispose of our trash properly.”

Society uses the word trash to include things that are broken, empty, soiled, redundant, outdated, obsolete, dangerous, obstructive, smelly, ugly, worthless, and useless.

After all, consider the alternative. Who among us would willingly choose to be a hoarder? Hoarders are characterized not only by their unbounded compulsion to acquire a large number of possessions that they don’t really need, but also by their failure to reduce that set to a reasonable size. Often, a hoarder’s own living space becomes so cluttered with possessions and so littered with their associated waste that it no longer can be traversed or used for its intended purposes—thus impeding the hoarder’s mobility, health, safety, social interactions, and quality of life.

Do we, as major city-dwellers, live in a hoarder’s house? Well, ecology means, literally, “study of the house” and it focuses upon all the relationships among and between “house members” and the environment. Planet Earth is the world population’s shared “house.”  Surely we ought to keep it clean, right? So, aren’t we compelled to “throw away unwanted and unneeded things” in order to do that? But…what do we really mean when we say that?

Dating back to 1983, our research group has been studying the public’s concept of “away.” We first read about this idea in Barry Commoner’s book: “The Closing Circle.” His Second Law of Ecology states: “Everything must go somewhere.” We find that factual statement to be both elegantly simple and deeply profound—we consider it to be the first principle for green living.

“Away” is, in some ways, a human delusion—a false belief or opinion that we have all learned and invoked since childhood. Is there really a great void somewhere, into which an infinite number of items can vanish? Or, is the term merely a convenient rationalization that we employ to avoid confronting the unpleasant reality that nothing we discard simply disappears. Maybe in the illusory world of the magician that can happen, but not in the real world in which we live.

Every whisker that goes down the drain when we shave, every litre of petrol that we combust to power our vehicles, every dead skin cell that we wash away when we bathe, every incense molecule we launch to “freshen” the air, every pound of body weight we lose when we are on a diet, truly does go somewhere. Matter is conserved.

For decades, science educators have focused their teaching on making the public scientifically literate. The underlying reasoning has been that a scientifically literate citizenry can and will make sound personal and political decisions about scientific issues. The problem is that even when people are capable of doing so, they often do not use what they know! In other words, scientific literacy is necessary but not sufficient for environmental activism and for practicing green living.

To understand the public’s challenges in understanding of concept of “away,” let’s use concept mapping. Thousands of concept map-based research studies have been conducted in science education world-wide. A concept map is a graphic representation of the relationships between related concepts. Concepts are placed on the map hierarchically—from most inclusive (at the top) to least inclusive (at the bottom).  All of the labeled lines connecting the labeled concept ovals comprise a network of meaning which we, the science education researchers and mapmakers, have constructed, based on data we have collected.

Although concept maps represent improved explanations of human understanding, they remain inferential approximations of what people actually think and know—since scientists cannot directly examine people’s brains to determine what each has learned during his/her life to date about a particular topic. Test scores, for example, are a weak proxy measure for what people actually know. Our maps are based on clinical interview data and have been “self-validated” by our interviewees.

Examine Concept Map #1. It depicts the complexity of the term “waste.”  Waste is a rather subjective human concept. We assert that progress in environmental stewardship can occur when what we once considered waste is viewed as something we now want to use, because we have new ways of using it. Note that this map also provides five terms that the people we studied considered to be equivalent in meaning to the word “waste.” We found that each term actually originated with a different shade of meaning—showing how multi-faceted human thinking about waste really is.  The more analytical we can be about the diversity of ascribed human meanings associated with the term “waste,” the better society can “manage” various categories of waste.

EarthScholars Research Group Concept Map 1

Examine Concept Map #2. It depicts the intellectual complexity of the reasoning we may use to justify our saying that we threw something away or something we used to have went away.

We may, for example, invoke a chemical explanation. A chemical change leading to some thing’s apparent disappearance can be a natural one, such as when iron rusts or when a log decays.  The apparent chemical disappearance of something can also be triggered by human activity, such as the acid rain resulting from smoke-stack emissions from coal-fueled electric power plants, It is noteworthy that we often think we have solved a problem by getting rid of something when, in actuality, we have really created a new problem elsewhere!

A physical change leading to a thing’s apparent disappearance can be enabled by a change of state—such as when water evaporates from the fabric while our clothes are drying on a clothesline in full sun.  We understand this water to “go away” via a physical process.

The illusion of something’s disappearance can be enabled by a change in size—such as when the engraved inscription on a gravestone is no longer legible because the stone’s surface has gradually been worn away through weathering.  Yet, we know the stone didn’t really disappear; it was just reduced to small particles.

The illusion of something’s disappearance can also be caused by a change in concentration, such as when the smoke from a campfire reaches skyward. It becomes diluted by the surrounding air and, at some distance away, is no longer visible—yet the molecules of smoke (a gaseous suspension of combustion products and particles in air) are still there.

For example, cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and over 400 other toxins. These include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.  If we air-out a room that formerly held smokers, we say the smoke is gone, but actually it went somewhere. We just pretend that it is gone forever!

The illusion of something’s disappearance can even be caused by a change in position, such as when birds disappear due to seasonal migration or when the Moon appears to be getting smaller every night (waning). As the Moon moves in space, different parts of it face the Sun. This means that different portions of it are lit up for us to see across the lunar cycle.

An apparent disappearance of energy can actually mask its transformation from one type of energy into another—such as when the gravitational force of falling water turns the water turbine of an electrical generator at a dam site to produce electricity, or when ice cubes cool a drink by removing heat from the beverage and disappear as they do so.

In addition to applying our scientific understanding to explain what “away” means, we may also invoke various psychological explanations—often to assuage any guilt we may feel about behaving wastefully.  Although it appears on Concept Map #2., we shall see that Concept Map #3. is devoted to elaborating those psychological ideas.

EarthScholars Research Group Concept Map 2

Examine Concept Map #3. It depicts ways people rationalize discarding their own waste and make claims about things “going away.”

One “away” justification that people use may occur when a conscious sensation falls below a sense-organ-detectable threshold value. Examples include: A person may claim that an odor has gone away if her nose is unable to detect it, once it has been masked by a fragrance emitted from a room air freshener.

Smokers often fail to self-detect that their cigarette smoke has been absorbed by the room’s drapes, upholstered furniture, walls, and even their own clothing, due to dulled olfactory acuity. The smoke didn’t really go away; instead it went somewhere and was absorbed.  Rudolf E. Noble (2000) studied “environmental tobacco smoke uptake by clothing fabrics” and found that synthetic fabrics (e.g., polyester) were the only ones that absorbed less smoke.

Humans also justify their own “away” behaviors by invoking a change in responsibility. The examples that follow explain how this may happen.

EarthScholars Research Group Concept Map 3

Examine Photograph #1. The boy in this photograph perceives that he has disposed of his metal beverage can properly in one of the park’s trash containers. So now, in his mind, that soft drink can has become the city sanitation department’s responsibility, not his.

Photo 1 Image Credit: EarthScholars Research Group

Examine Photograph #2. Another person donates his old automobile to a charity and transfers ownership to it. He feels he has no legal or moral responsibility for that car any longer. It has now “vanished” from his life, and someone else can worry about its environmental impacts.

Photo 2 Image Credit: ll3.ppht.com

Examine Photograph #3. This image illustrates the passage of time rationale. The girl in the photograph points to the curbside storm drain where she saw a man dump the used motor oil from his auto engine. That was two weeks ago, and because it rained since then, she thinks that all the oil he poured down this drain has now dissolved in the rainwater that followed.

Photo 3 Image Credit: EarthScholars Research Group

Actually, oil does not dissolve in water and, instead, it persists and gets washed into lakes, rivers, and streams, and ultimately into the oceans, A single litre of motor oil can pollute 250,000 gallons of water. In the US, used motor oil is the largest single source of water pollution in nature. Americans spill 180, 000, 000 gallons of motor oil each year into the nation’s waters! Storm drains are designed exclusively for run-off water—not waste disposal.

We hope the examples and explanations we have provided helped you to understand the content of our three concept maps.

The startling conclusion from inspecting our set of concept maps is that matter and energy really don’t “disappear” or “go away.” Terms expressing surprise, such as “side effects” and “spillover,” reflect the tunnel vision of those who insist on taking an “out of sight, out of mind” position on humanity’s interactions with the biosphere.

We can no longer afford such irresponsibility, but must learn to conduct intellectually honest cost/benefit analyses of our environmental stewardship behaviors—analyses that take into account everything that we “throw away” or “discard.”

We must also teach others to confront their “away” misconceptions.  We have found that even children can develop sophisticated concepts of “away” (and the concomitant value of personal responsibility), when provided with appropriate learning experiences.  For example, children are seldom taught how a city’s underground sewer and storm drainage systems work, what happens to their garbage once waste disposal trucks haul it away, where their own life-generated garbage is right now, how long various components of their own waste stream take to break down, what happens to plastic packaging after it enters the world’s oceans, and so on. When we fail to teach children such key environmental back-stories, we unwittingly enable bad environmental stewardship. Wasteful behaviors endanger precious environmental and natural resources that can impact the quality of all human life on Earth.

Finally, we wish to call our readers’ attention to Kurt Cobb’s (2007) inverted graphic entitled an Ecological Economist’s View of US GDP.

Photo 4 Image Credit: EarthScholars Research Group

Cobb’s diagram is an atypical representation of a country’s GDP (gross domestic product), because many economists today ascribe relatively low importance to natural and environmental resources in explaining sustainable growth of national and world economies.

However, Kurt Cobb argues that Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, which stresses the importance of limiting factors for the growth of organisms can be applied to economies as well. He suggests that the two environmental and natural resources that most limit economic growth are food plus the fossil fuels needed today to produce enough food.

Thus, in his view, the agriculture and mining sectors of the GDP are actually the foundation of the US economy. He writes, “The entire economy stands on the shoulders, as it were, of agriculture, forestry, and mining (especially the extraction of oil, gas, coal and uranium) and on the utilities that deliver the energy mined in usable form.”

Conversely, the bloated and over-compensated Finance sector’s workforce doesn’t drive the nation’s economy, its two fundamental resource sectors and their workforces do.

We are balancing an ever larger total economy on agricultural and mining sectors that, on a relative basis, are already very small…and shrinking. Admittedly, we are getting more efficient, but Cobb is worried that we are becoming ever more vulnerable to oil and food supply disruptions. He says, “Of course, the United States could import food, if the size of its agricultural sector declined without a corresponding increase in productivity. But such a strategy wouldn’t work if every country pursued a conscious policy of shrinking its agriculture, or if worldwide food production plunged abruptly because of poor harvests.”

This is why we think every world citizen needs to understand the future implications of participating in a “disposable society,” a society that:

(a) harbors delusional views about “waste” and flawed concepts about personal responsibility for reducing waste, and

(b) displays environmental  apathy or amnesia by over-consuming and throwing valuable resources “away.”

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About the Guest Writers:

DR. JAMES H. WANDERSEE — botanist, FLS, FAAAS–is the W.H. LeBlanc Alumni Association Professor of Biology Education in the College of Education at Louisiana State University and Chair of the Teaching Section of the Botanical Society of America. His website is EarthScholars.com

DR RENEE M. CLARY—geologist, FGS–is the Director of the Dunn-Seiler Geology Museum and Assistant Professor of Geoscience Education in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University. Her website is EarthScholars.com

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Authors’ Notes: The particular kind of concept mapping used in this article is called Novakian concept mapping, invented at Cornell University in 1978. We have been using it in our work for over three decades.

If you are interested in learning more about how to do concept mapping, as it is done in the field of science education, you may be interested in these books.

Fisher, K.M., Wandersee, J.H., & Moody, D. (Eds.). (2000). Mapping biology knowledge.  Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Hardcover, 224 pages; also published in paperback, 2002].

Mintzes, J. J., Wandersee, J. H., & Novak, J. D. (Eds.). (1998). Teaching science for understanding. [Educational Psychology Series: 360 pages]. Orlando, FL:  Academic Press.

Concept mapping software for PC and MAC computers (“CmapTools”) is available for free download at http://cmap.ihmc.us/

The Fourth International Conference on Concept Mapping was held in Chile in 2010. See http://cmc.ihmc.us/

Other posts you may be interested in: 

1. Plant Blindness: What research says by James H. Wandersee & Renee M. Clary

2. The Bridge Between Ecological Knowledge and Green Living by James H. Wandersee & Renee M. Clary

3. Teach Me About Soil by James H. Wandersee & Renee M. Clary

4. A Green Lesson from Mumbai about Food Packaging by James H. Wandersee & Renee M. Clary

5. Janet Unruh: Recycle Everything Why We Must, How We Can

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India is a land of extreme contrasts. While there are pockets of unimaginable wealth and prosperity due to the rapid economic growth of recent decades, these co-exist with a vast population of poor who can barely feed or clothe themselves, whether in urban slums or in villages. Women are the worst affected by lack of access to water, sanitation, and crucially to a piece of clean cloth which they desperately need every month during their menstrual cycles.

Anshu Gupta, Founder of GOONJ

In a culture where broaching the subject of menstruation is taboo even amongst women, it is indeed unusual to find a man championing the issue. Anshu Gupta discovered the gravity of the problem over his two decades travels throughout India. He is the founder of GOONJ, one of India’s leading social enterprises channelising underutilised materials from urban homes like clothes, stationery, utensils etc., and turning them into valuable resources for the rural poor. Today GOONJ sends out more than 70 tonnes of material every month to parts of 21 states of India. GOONJ is a recipient of multiple national and international awards and our previous talk with Anshu Gupta last year, brings out the innovative efforts made by the organisation in solving important but often overlooked problems of the poor in India.

In this very forthright, poignant and shocking interview, he delves into the nuances of the sanitary napkin problem, an issue which warrants serious and urgent attention, after decades of neglect by the government, the health sector, NGOs and development agencies, both nationally and globally. He is best placed to speak on the subject because GOONJ was one of the very first organisations to open up this much hidden issue and bring the same to public attention.

He is also concerned about the Indian government’s proposal to implement a huge annual subsidised scheme of distributing non-biodegradable, disposable sanitary napkins which has the potential of becoming another fiscal and environmental disaster. Find out more here.

EWTT: How did you start the programme for recycling cloth into sanitary napkins?

AG: GOONJ works on the basic issue of clothing. Usually one talks of ‘roti, kapda aur makaan’ meaning food, clothing and shelter, but most agencies forget about the need for clothing.  As a poor person, if you don’t have even have enough to wear, where and how are you going to bring that particular piece of cloth that is needed for your periods every month?

In the absence of a clean piece of cloth it’s an ongoing disaster for a woman, which goes on for 30 to 35 years in the life of a woman. Despite that, the subject is taboo. In 2004, when we started talking about the issue, we discovered how even urban women feel uncomfortable talking about it, so you can imagine the situation amongst rural women.

EWTT: What did you find when you started the program on providing sanitary napkins from recycled cloth?

Team GOONJ cutting cloth for sanitary napkins

AG: When we first started, we wanted to find what was happening across the globe on this issue, especially in India. In 2004, when we googled  ‘sanitary pad’ or ‘sanitary napkin,’ there was hardly any research or discussion or work happening on this. We could only find information about fancy disposable products from different countries.  We also realised that though nearly half the world is women, and that even though the target market is women, for self- help groups, the microfinance sector, the health sector and even corporate CSR – the subject of sanitary napkins was not talked about at all.

It was all very new to us. The only asset we had was a thought, a solution, something like an old piece of cloth in our head. We started travelling around the country just to find out what was happening. What we found was absolutely scary. It was absolutely unimaginable for us especially as we didn’t belong to the hardcore health or development sector.

We found that poor women actually use the dirtiest piece of cloth, if at all it is available to them, because for them, menses is a synonym for dirt. For a large number of women, it is a one way process; when they see blood, they think something bad is coming out, almost equating it to ‘paap’ or sin. They don’t understand it’s a two way process, and a lot of infection and disease can actually go in. Using the dirtiest piece of cloth, they wash it but cannot even dry it under sunlight for reasons of privacy.  Also we found that washing itself is a very big problem, because most places in India are dependent on hand-pumps. Hand pumps are always put up at an open, public place and there is no privacy. If you do not have a place to bathe in, how can you wash the piece of cloth in public?

Please click on the icon at the bottom right hand corner of the slide to see enlarged version

EWTT: What were the other things women were actually using?

Layers of recycled cloth fillers in GOONJ's sanitary napkin

AG: The women basically use a piece of cloth, with a lot of moisture as they are not dried properly. In the slums, they actually dry the cloth behind the door. In the evening, before the men come, they pick it and dump it in the corner of the house, and then with moisture and dust they wear it again. Sometimes we find that there are two to three women in the family with different cycles, and they actually share the same piece of cloth. We also found cases where this is shared even amongst neighbours.

If you go to Sunderban Delta of West Bengal today, you will even find women using the same piece of cloth for over a year. Even if it is almost like stone, they still use it, because there is no access to a piece of cloth.  That is the level of poverty, the level of non-accessibility to basic necessities – a result of not addressing these fundamental issues for decades.

Then we found that millions of women are actually using gunny bags, sand, ash, jute, “dhari ka tukda” (piece of a rug), newspaper, rice husk, even plastic which is quite gruesome. A woman died of tetanus as she used a piece of a blouse with a rusted hook. In many of the villages that we reach, women tell us that they have lost their uterus, because the moment an infection happens, the local health system tells them there are chances of cervical cancer, so it is better to remove the uterus. Imagine at a child bearing age if you have to lose the uterus. This is the scale of the problem.

EWTT: You also found that most of villages had no common toilets, or infrastructure for sanitation?

Sanitary pads made from recycled cloth getting ready for packing

AG: Toilets are a very large issue in India, Africa and the Indian subcontinent countries. If you talk about toilets, we have really crushed women on this issue. We have forced women to go against nature. Every single person gets up in the morning and goes to the toilet.  But if you imagine the villages, there are millions of people across the country, where women are forced to shit in the evening, because there is no privacy in the morning. What eventually happens is that you go against nature. Women wait till the evening to ease out. But there are a lot of problems in the evening in the bushes such as insects and snakes, so they can’t go deep into the jungles and have to ease out by the roads. Once they see the headlights of a vehicle approaching, they will get up in the middle of the process, and once the vehicle passes, they sit down again. Where can we talk about the health and hygiene issues?

So both lack of access to water, and lack of access to toilets compounds the problem for women during the monthly cycles.

EWTT: Do you see the impact of the lack of sanitary napkins, or sanitation in general on education, especially for teenage girls?

Making paper bags with recycled newspaper and homemade glue

AG: Many girls leave school at the age of 12 or 13. In the villages they may have reached only 2^nd or 3^rd standard (grade), so most of the girls don’t study beyond the primary stage. People also think the child has matured and is hence of marriageable age, especially where child marriages are prevalent.

If you solve the issue of sanitary napkins and treat it at the source, many of the women’s health and reproductive issues won’t even come up. A critical aspect is spreading awareness on the health and hygiene aspects of the issue, removing the taboo from this basic biological process, so that women, especially young girls who don’t have anyone to talk to them about this issue, open up and share their problems and difficulties.

What girls are looking for is some closed area such as a small 2ft by 2ft enclosed space, with a dustbin and access to at least an old but clean piece of cloth.

Some Hard Facts (from GOONJ’s notice board in New Delhi, India)

* One in 6 girls in India begins child bearing between the ages 13 and 16
* Maternal mortality accounts for 15% of all deaths of women of reproductive age in India
* The Nutrition Foundation estimates that the average age of menarche is 13.4 years, yet 50% of all girls both urban and rural have no understanding of this basic biological process
* As many as 40-45% of girls report menstrual problems
*Across the developing world, the lack of appropriate and adequate sanitation facilities, prevent girls from attending schools, particularly when they are menstruating. Of the 113 million children currently not attending school worldwide, 60% are girls. There is conclusive evidence that girls’ attendance at school is increased through improved sanitation.
* About 34% of Indian women use disposable napkins, the other 66% use cloth

EWTT: Tell us about GOONJ’s work on sanitary napkins. How do you actually sit and discuss this issue with the women?

Awareness Exhibition by GOONJ to open up the taboo subject

AG: In 2004, we started making sanitary napkins out of old cloth. We collect clothes for our other initiatives like Cloth for Work, and Vastra Samman, and a small part of what we collect is cotton or semi-cotton cloth which can’t be used for other things. We wash and dry the cloth under sunlight, and make it into a sanitary pad. We make about 150,000 to 200,000 pads in a month.

Most of these women have little access to preventative medical care. Even where there are doctors, many don’t want to examine them because of hygiene issues,

We’ve developed an exhibition which we put up in the villages, to create awareness about the issue, as well as to listen to the people there to understand their realities. Usually when we go to the villages, we notice in our first meetings that women don’t want to talk about the subject of menstruation. In the first couple of minutes, they are quite shy and don’t want to lift up their heads when you broach the topic. We get stereotypical responses like ‘how can we talk about this?’

But then slowly they start opening up, and when they open up, they really, really open up and share their suffering. After all, for them it’s a monthly disaster, about which they haven’t been able to speak about to anyone.  It’s such a taboo subject, they don’t even talk to their husbands about it. Their only outlet is their peer group which in any case is ill informed.

We have heard hundreds of stories on how women suffer due to this taboo and lack of clean cloth. I remember for example, talking to a lady who in the peak of summer, desperately used the leftover of a winter quilt. She used the torn outer cover of a quilt  which was extremely warm against the body due to summer. She had an infection and ultimately had her uterus removed.

When we talk to women about the health aspect of this issue they are able to relate to what is going on in their lives, and connect the dots that it’s all because of a piece of cloth. That’s why we say, it’s not just a piece of cloth but much more . Over the years we have seen that when women are given a decent piece of cloth, they feel a difference in their menses experience; a sense of comfort and relief in itching,wounds, boils and discharge. They are able to connect the problem to what they were doing before.

Awareness and opening up the issue is critical to addressing this neglected  basic need of a woman apart from accessibility and affordability of the napkins. Doing one without the other will only nullify the impact in the long run.

EWTT: Why is there still such a big neglect in this critical area of women’s health. What are your concerns about the solutions to the sanitary napkin issue?

Packing and sealing the cloth sanitary napkins in recycled paper bags

AG: In 2007, when we won the Global Development Marketplace Award from World Bank, for our efforts on recycling cloth into sanitary napkins, we were in Washington. A lot of people came and asked us about “sustainability”, “measurability” and so on – some of today’s buzzwords. We asked a basic question to them. We said, “there are so many organisations in the health sector, but how many of them have a budget for sanitary napkins? Do you really need a qualitative or quantitative research or is it just common sense?”

In places like Arunachal Pradesh and Assam (North Eastern states of India), there are landslides, floods and natural disasters every year. Even in their basic disaster relief material, there is nothing like sanitary pads included.  At least during normal times, you have a hut where you can hide yourself but after a disaster, even that hut is taken away from you. Only recently, some organisations have started doing this – giving a piece of cloth or cotton.

What’s shocking is that the government or public health sector has not focused on all the aspects of this basic issue.  Obviously there’s a big gap. That is why, in my opinion it is very important to open up the subject.

The Government of India recently came up with a plan, to bring napkins at a subsidised rate to 150 districts of India. But I don’t know how they are going to implement it, because I don’t really think the grassroots people are really involved in making the napkins. They also need to understand the disposal issue, and how long can this be subsidised to this extent.

Ruchika of GOONJ explaining the logistics and packing system

This issue has not been addressed in the last 50 years, and NGOs and other organisations need some time to build up their capacity. It should not become an excuse to give entry to the typical market based products. If the market can innovate and come up with a biodegradable napkin, it should enter. If they enter with the present product which has plastic sheet in the pad, as well as plastic in the wrapping as well, it will be a total mess.

I will tell you how, for example typically there are around 400 houses in a village with about 1000 women or so as users of sanitary pads. Every women needs about 7-8 pads, so 7000 to 8000 pads are required a month or about 70-80,000 pads per annum. Imagine if you use a non-biodegradable product in a village where there is no proper sanitation or disposal facilities. The soil is already worsened due to fertilisers and pesticides. The disposal of a sanitary pad typically happens near a water body. If the plastic goes into the soil, imagine what kind of an environmental damage this would cause. Similarly in a city slum, you’d be walking on sanitary pads as most of the toilets would be choked without a separate channel to dispose.

This should not become a marketing gimmick for the government or for corporate CSR.  Even if corporates distribute napkins, it will not solve the problem. They must take the effort to educate people about the issue in a locality and then supplement with a biodegradable product. That’s the best approach. They shouldn’t just come on one day, distribute a few pads and then go away.

This is a very serious issue, and before it becomes a glamorised subject, with superficial solutions, people need to understand the gravity and depth of the issue.

Free sanitary napkins – A scam in the making?

Ever so quietly, the Indian Health ministry is making plans to help multinational sanitary napkin makers with a mega project that is expected to cost the government Rs. 2000 crores annually.

According to a report in The Hindu last Sunday, the government plans to supply about hundred free sanitary napkins to an estimated 200 million rural women annually to boost female health and hygiene in rural India. At the rate of Re one per napkin, the project cost is evaluated at Rs.2000 crores annually.

Many may not be aware that the lion’s share of the Indian sanitary napkin market is controlled by two MNCs, Procter and Gamble (makers of Whisper) and Johnson and Johnson (makers of Stayfree and Carefree). It is likely that the government may strike a deal with one of the two companies for the napkin project. A distant third player in this market is Kimberly Clark Lever, a joint venture between Kimberly Clark and Hindustan Lever Limited.Ever so quietly, the Indian Health ministry is making plans to help multinational sanitary napkin makers with a mega project that is expected to cost the government Rs. 2000 crores annually.   Read more here

From former Tehelka reporter, P.C. Vinoj Kumar’s blog Breakfree on Feb 23, 2010

EWTT: What change would you like to see happen?

Teaching women at Muzaffarnagar, India to make sanitary napkins

AG: The government needs to be worried about this. When there is crocin (paracetemol) and condoms in public health sector, you should also have  sanitary pads. But the right kind of sanitary pads.

We need to find a local solution. If there is a village which has been using wood pulp or wood ash or sand, there may be problems with that but the women are still surviving. Can we work on improving the existing products and processes, instead of saying outright that these are very bad? Ash for example is used for healing wounds, it could even be a good thing, but the quality of the ash may be an issue as is the quality of a piece of cloth.  We need to understand the issues, improve upon what is already available, and come up with a localised solution.

Most of us interact with at least 4 to 5 women including the helper maid , presswalli (lady who does the ironing), subzi walli (vegetable vendor); everywhere you see women. If we just start talking to these women about the issue and help them, you’ve actually taken care of 5 families. We need awareness, and action on a huge scale; at the micro and macro levels.

Help GOONJ in various ways:

*  Join GOONJ on Facebook. Visit GOONJ’s website, and find out more about their initiatives and how you can help .
*  If you wish to visit GOONJ’s offices, volunteer,  arrange for collection centres for old clothes, stationery, toys, books or other materials in your town or city in India, contribute to GOONJ’s efforts or seek any information, kindly write to ruchika@goonj.org

*  GOONJ requires resources to process and reach the collected material to the remote villages across India. Every penny matters for a tightly run operation like GOONJ. If you have any financial contributions to make, please see details below.

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For contributions made from OUTSIDE India (Foreign transfers only)

Make a direct transfer, rotate it- through Wacovia Bank, New York , Swift code- 2000193008933, GOONJ, A/C No- 2591101004644, Bank- Canara Bank, H block, Market Sarita Vihar, New Delhi- 110076, Swift Code-CNRBINBBDFS

* Please mail your full name, address and cheque/draft or wire transfer details to priyanka@goonj.org for receipt purpose.

For contributions made from India You can directly deposit the cheque in GOONJ’s account or transfer as per details given below-
In favor of- GOONJ ; Bank Name – HDFC BANK ; Account No – 04801450000130 , Bank Address – Plot No-9,H & J Block,Local Shopping Complex, Sarita Vihar, New Delhi-110076
Bank Branch Code – 0480 ; IFSC Code – HDFC0000480 ; Bank Swift Code – HDFCINBB ( *Please note– That this account will accept the contribution with in India only and no foreign transaction is allowed as per guidelines of Ministry of Home & Finance.)

You can also drop the cheque /draft in the name of GOONJ in any of HDFC branch. For any queries, please call GOONJ on 011- 41401216, 26972351 or write to priyanka@goonj.org for receipt purpose.

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You can also help in these 6 critical ways:

1. TEAM 2000 is GOONJ’s fund raising initiative to bring together a strong team of 2000 people who can contribute a sum of Rs. 10,000/- or more in a year (About $ 250 a year or just about Rs. 800/- a month) for as long as they feel comfortable. Apart from taking care of major regular expenses, the money will be used for growth, expansion and wider replication. A simple form is enclosed giving the money transfer options. Contributions in India are tax exempted u/s 80G of IT act.
2. Vehicles: With the spread, transport cost has gone up and material inflow at GOONJ is increasing. Pick up vans are an immediate need in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata & Jalandhar (@ approximately Rs 4.5 lakh or US $ 10,000)
3. Computers/laptops: GOONJ is trying to use technology to make its operations more efficient, and scalable. They need good, high end systems. Laptops are preferred as most team members spend a lot of time in the field. Their requirement is of 25 Computers/laptops and 7 printers/photocopy machines .

One of GOONJ's collection and delivery vans

4. Transport support or linkages with transport companies to reach out material to hundreds of towns/villages across the country.
5. Space: GOONJ is looking for about 2000 sq. ft. space for a processing centers/storage in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Jalandhar, Chennai and Hyderabad either pro-bono or on minimum possible rent. Chennai and Hyderabad are most urgent.
6. Linkages with garment industry people, primarily dealing with cotton and hosiery surplus, under/non utilized material. GOONJ produces about 2,00,000 (2 lakh) sanitary pads and undergarments for women right now and the demand is much more.

YouTube: Global Oneness Project – Not Just A Piece of Cloth

Video link here

YouTube: Watch Anshu Gupta at TEDxMICA here

EWTT: Anshu Gupta’s GOONJ: Recycling Urban Waste For The Rural Poor

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