Transcript
On average, a woman uses 50 pads during her lifetime, and one pad takes hundreds of years to fully biodegrade.
But often taboos surrounding periods, combined with the absence of female decision makers in business, has been a hindrance to development.
In Samoa, sanitary care is expensive especially for many women on low incomes or based in rural areas like the island of Savaii.
The founders of MANA Care, Isabell Rasch and Angelica Salele- Sefo, who both work for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Apia, were motivated to address the problem.
So they designed a pad type product made of a special fabric that lasts for up to two years and can be reused and washed, making it more user friendly to the environment.
Both say women should feel empowered to be able to discuss periods openly, as it is indicates fertility and is something to be thankful for and celebrated.
In this age of one time use plastic products, Ms Rasch says it was a priority to find a more eco-friendly solution that people could afford and thanks to an environment grant they were able to open for business sooner.
"Demand has already kicked off [and] so we were in a recruiting process and because, like we said, this is a business owned by two Samoan women and we want to give back to not only empowering Samoan people, but Samoan women."
Isabell Rasch says their project was the only one selected from the Pacific in the Asia Pacific region as one of 12 winners in a UN Environment competition.
Each winner received $US10,000, which MANA Care used for design, buying special fabric and hiring staff.
UN Programme officer Janet Salem says their initiative was a great fit.
She says the competition's aim was to find innovative ways to make sustainable lifestyles easier in Asia and the Pacific.
"It is actually giving consumers access to female hygiene products sometimes for the first time and that is something that Angelica and Isabell feel very strongly about as they are going to ensure the product is available to low income consumers who were either using unhygienic methods or they weren't using much at all and it was preventing them from interacting socially while they had their periods every month."
Ms Salem says the fact that their product absorbs what it needs to, can be washed and dried in the sun and then reused just makes feminine care more accessible, plus the pads look nice.
The carbon footprint from making female hygiene products is enormous and despite it being a multi-billion industry, female hygiene has seen few innovations over 80 years.
"We carbon footprinted each pad, the plastic pads versus the cotton pads. And the plastic ones add up three and a half kilos of a carbon footprint even and so this contributes to climate reduction and also waste management especially for small pacific islands."
Ms Rasch says they already have plans to develop and one day make reuseable nappies and wipes.
"We hope to continue an exclusive business which can contribute to low income communities and we also want to carry out campaigns to schools and victim support and women's prisons and within the next two months we hope to set up a pop up shop and we hope to take that over to Savaii."
She says currently their pad pack costs 70 tala or $US27, which includes two liners, two regular pads and two overnight pads, but each product can also be purchased individually.
