Biodegradable sanitary napkins from banana plant: a step towards revolutionizing feminine hygiene in India.

courtesy: betterindia.com

Inadequate access to sanitary napkins makes adolescent girls in India miss schools for 5 days a month or nearly 60 days a year while another 25% drop out of school after they start menstruating.

Many girls and women could not afford to use sanitary protection because of high prizes and cultural taboos. According to a 2011 survey Only 16% of India's 355 million menstruating women use sanitary napkins. Around 70% of women in India say their family can't afford to buy them.

A well researched Ted talk about Menstrual Health of  Women and Girls in India by Sinu Joseph explains the ground reality. It can be accessed here. 

According to UNICEF survey in 2012, 43%-88% percent of girls in urban India use reusable cloth, yet they are often washed without soap or clean water [1]

A new healthcare start-up founded by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates have launched a new revolution in women’s hygiene industry by creating biodegradable sanitary napkins from locally sourced banana fibers. They are also hoping to improve waste disposal of pads because it degrades faster if buried. On average, a single woman generates 125 kg of sanitary waste during her menstruating years when she uses disposable sanitary products.[2]

Kristin Kagetsu and co-founders--- Grace Kane, Amrita Saigal and Tarun Bothra, all mechanical engineers initial plan was to design and sell machines to manufacture low cost sanitary napkins.

Then they decided to manufacture their own compostable sanitary pads using banana fibers, a byproduct of fruit production. With an initial grant from Harvard Business School they launched and named their start-up ‘Saathi’.

http://www.saathipads.com/product

It took nearly six months to roll out the first pad. The company has grown from manufacturing few 100 to 1,300 pads a day. The factory is based at Ahmedabad and employs 17 full time and 4 part time local workers.

“Access to sanitary pads means [women] can go to school and work more.” Kagetsu says.

The company purchases agricultural waste, a byproduct of banana farming and help turn them into pads, helping the farmers with additional income.

The production process is completely chemical and plastic free -- right down to the boxes and packaging material.

banana fibre 

Kagetsu says “Banana fiber, she notes, is one of the most absorbent natural fibers, and it is very abundant in Gujarat and thrown out. The pads last for six to eight hours like standard pads.”

Saathi is finalist for the SXSW Accelerator in the "Health and Wearables Technologies" category and will be presenting the product on March 12,2017 at Austin, Texas.[3]

In 2017, Saathi plans to distribute 1 million pads to rural women in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Saathi is also hosting a menstrual hygiene education event, training and orientation workshop in Jharkhand State later in February.

Back in 2014, a coalition of national and international organization observed ‘Menstrual Hygiene Day’ on May 28, to break the taboos, educate the adolescent girls and encourage women in rural and urban set -up to talk about it.

To make the pad affordable many companies and non-profit have launched the production and sale of low cost napkins especially in rural areas. Notable among them is Arunachalam Muruganantham who also goes by the name of ‘Menstrual Man’ in India, created a sanitary napkin-making machine to produce quality products at a lower cost to the consumer.

He was extensively featured in an article in New York times.[4] It can be accessed here. His dream is to make India, Rwanda and Zimbabwe into a 100 percent napkin-using country.

Similarly, Elizabeth Scharpf launched Sustainable Health Enterprises, or SHE at Kigali, Rwanda in 2012 to manufacture sanitary napkins from banana tree bark.[5]

Paul Ntikoisa and Ivy Etemesi, two local student from Kenya have also launched a similar project to increase access to sanitary pads in schools. About 2 .6 million schoolgirls in Kenya lack access to affordable and hygienic sanitary towels, according to Unesco.[6]

Scharpf describes her project in this slide show by David Pelcyger

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[1] http://www.rutgers.international/sites/rutgersorg/files/PDF/Facts%26Figures%201weekextra%20Engels.pdf

[2] https://ecofemme.org/

[3] https://www.sxsw.com/awards/sxsw-accelerator/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/13/magazine/design-issue-sanitary-pads-india.html?_r=0

[5] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/elizabeth-scharpf/

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/26/kenyan-girls-sanitary-problem-banana-fibre-pad