The women taking the plastic out of periods
Sanitary products litter Europe’s beaches, and 200,000 tonnes a year end up in UK landfill. Meet the people fighting for ‘environmenstrual’ alternatives
Ella Daish has lost count of how many tampon pictures she has. People send them in from all over the world – plastic applicators polluting the environment, blue, orange, green, purple and yellow.
“That’s a rainbow of plastic pollution,” says Daish, 27, a campaigner seeking to persuade companies and governments to remove plastics from women’s sanitary products. “This is a global issue, but period products aren’t talked about much; they need to be stopped at source.”
Sanitary products are the fifth most common item found on Europe’s beaches, more widespread than single-use coffee cups, cutlery or straws. Some is believed to end up in UK landfill every year. The water engineer Hazem Gouda has estimated that .
