Mooncup

A friend of mine mentioned a few years ago that she was thinking of buying a mooncup. My initial reaction was 'Eurghhhh!!! That's so gross', and then that was it really. She didn't buy one and there was no more said about it.

I also didn't think much more about it until I was packing to go travelling, and had to pack a ridiculous number of tampons to take with me as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to buy them anywhere whilst travelling through Africa.

When I got back to Kenya, I spent a few days helping out at Mission in Action baby orphanage (http://www.missioninaction.com.au/), but went back to visit the Walk Centre (http://www.thewalkchildrenschurch.org.uk/), where I'd worked before. The kids here all live on the local rubbish dump and both the children and their parents will forage amongst the rubbish to find anything they can eat, wear or sell. Whilst being shown around the rubbish dump to be shown the new rooves on some of the childrens houses, I noticed a massive amount of sanitary towels which just didn't seem to be decomposing at all.

I did a bit of research and couldn't find an exact answer on how long they take to decompose, but I did find out that disposable nappies take 200 to 500 years to decompose and some of the plastic used may never even disappear. That's a ridiculously long time. The plastic in them is also made from crude oil and harmful pollutants which go directly into the earth and are really bad for the environment. In comparison, it only take 6 months to one year for a tampon to completely bio-degrade. Apparently 90% of the sanitary products we used are flushed and end up floating around in the sea until they eventually bio-degrade, if they can.

Again, I didn't think much about this until I was in Rio at the end of my travels last year. As must be the case in many other places around the world where there is a large city situated right on the coastline, a lot of rubbish ends up in the sea. And when there is a stunning, pristine beach, the last thing you want is to be fishing tampons out of your hair.

Thankfully, this didn't happen to me, but I did see a lot of waste including tampons floating around in the sea and heard the horror stories of other people having to pick used tampons out of their hair. That's definitely more disgusting than the thought of a mooncup.

As soon as I got back from travelling then, I decided that this was one way that I could reduce the amount I throw away and so I bought a mooncup. I didn't actually use it for the first month as I will admit that I was pretty scared by it. Mainly that it is quite big. But then I took the plunge and now I can honestly say that I am hooked and will never go back to tampons or sanitary towels again.

Apart from a minor (well pretty major) incident where I forgot about my mooncup whilst sterilising it (it has its own saucepan which I keep in my room - don't worry) and so melted a hole in it and had to buy a new one, I will have it for as long as I need it and there will be no waste each month. Perfect!

Also, as I have very light periods, I used to get quite uncomfortable when having to change a tampon and it was not used enough, and pulling out a fairly dry tampon also increases your risk of contracting TSS. The mooncup is perfect as it is soft, smooth silicone and you really can't feel it at all when it's in. I have spoken to some of my friends about this who are still unsure but I really do urge everyone to convert to a mooncup. You really won't regret it!