aggravatedOn that note... I'm kind of a community service geek; I love helping out and volunteering and being an activist. So last week on one of my mailing lists I got a request asking me to help out at something called Go Green Expo 2008. I'll admit that my lifestyle isn't completely earth-friendly and sustainable (being a busy and broke college student can lead one to be rather complacent and wasteful... sigh. I'm trying to be better, I promise) but switching to using a cup and cloth pads has definitely led to a raised consciousness and a personal desire to be nicer to the environment. So, naturally, I wondered whether there were any Cup or Cloth Pad manufacturers coming to the Expo. A quick search revealed none. I thought that was weird, and wondered if maybe they would allow volunteers to give out homemade pamphlets, but that didn't seem to fit in with their professional "expo" atmosphere.
I went from the Expo site to a site called The Green Guide. There I found lots of posts denouncing the wastefulness of paper napkins, but zero on the wastefulness of sanitary napkins. No coverage of alternative menstrual products on either website. There were many mentions of reusable diapers, but nothing even remotely related to reusable menstrual products. Why is this? Is menstruation (something completely normal that every women goes through) still too taboo to talk about, even on a "progressive" website? There may have been one or two mentions of organic tampons and pads, and that's a start, but aren't those wasteful, too? It really aggravated me.
I'd thought about e-mailing Lunapads or GladRags or a couple of Cup manufacturers, and then asking them if they want to contact these sites and let them know about their products, but I don't want give the advantage to one brand (I know that's what bothers a lot of cup users about those of us who like to "evangelize.") But I would like to get some other opinions, because this is really bothering me. Why is it "cool to go Green" but not OK to promote reusables? What can we do to change this?
If any of you would like to contact the people at those websites and suggest they do a piece on reusable menstrual products, you can try looking here and here, for starters. If anyone has a better idea, please share.
Cross-posted to
cloth_pads and menstrual_cups