Washable sanitary products

Nothing new under the sun, feminine hygiene products are clearly very polluting when they are single-use!

Personally, I have been using the menstrual cup and washable sanitary napkins for over a decade.

Not only is this beneficial for the environment but it gives me much greater comfort than what can be found on a large scale.

Beneficial for the environment?

It is estimated that the average woman will use 10,000 menstruation products in her lifetime. Does this seem excessive to you? Let's do a little calculation:

The average woman menstruates from age 13 to age 50: 33 years
Average number of menstrual cycles per year: 13
Number of tampons and/or sanitary napkins used per cycle: 22

So, 33x13X22= 9438! 9438 disposable products!

When we know that single-use sanitary napkins are made from plastic (not counting other chemicals!) and that they take up to 500 years to degrade in our landfills, we can easily understand that this is not the case. This is not a trivial gesture.

And the cost that comes from my wallet?

The BBC has released a calculation tool to assess the financial cost of single-use sanitary protection over a woman's lifetime. According to their tool, the cost of purchasing these products would be around $3,000!

Regarding reusable products, we have not found any data on this subject but we are willing to play the game.

For those who only use washable sanitary napkins . Let us start from the following premises:

A woman has her period for 33 years, and each sanitary napkin lasts on average 6 years (and it's often more!).
Let's also keep here that she needs 22 sanitary napkins. She will therefore have to buy 22 washable sanitary napkins approximately 5 times in her life (remember that we said 10,000 for single use!). So an approximate total of 110 washable sanitary napkins for a lifetime.
If we put the price of $11.50 per washable towel, that makes 110X$11.50 = $1265

The difference is therefore a saving of $1735!

For those who use a menstrual cup and washable sanitary napkins .

The purchase of a menstrual cup varies between $15 and $50. So we're going to make an average price of $30 here. A cut certainly lasts 5 years. A woman will therefore have to buy 6 over the course of her life for a total of $180
Most will also use sanitary napkins for the first few days of menstruation or at night. From experience, having 6 is more than enough. A woman will therefore buy 6 times 6 sanitary napkins at $11.50 for a total of $414.
The combination of the two types of purchase for a woman will therefore be $584

The difference is therefore a saving of $2416!

We also have two other good news!

The first is that menstrual products are not taxable! This is how it is in Quebec!

The second is that several municipalities (still not enough for our liking!) have set up a system of subsidizing the purchase of reusable hygienic products.

Without intending to be exhaustive, and you can add others in comments, here is a list of the municipalities concerned: