Re-usable Sanitary Napkins: A Guide To Cutting Costs While Menstruating

Studies reveal that on an average, a menstruating woman spends a huge amount of money on disposable sanitary napkins a year.This not only makes it difficult, but almost impossible for menstruating women in a lot of lower income societies to have access to a life of dignity.

Here is how cost of sanitary products impacts women:

Almost 70 percent of women use disposable products such as tampons or disposable pads Also, you’re instructed to change your napkin every 4 to 8 hours. Let's assume 6 hours as an average. A box containing 40 pads approximately costs Rs. 240 which makes it Rs. 6 per napkin.

1 napkin every 6 hours = 4 pads per day x 5 days of a period = 20 pads per cycle x 456 periods (in a lifetime) = 9,120 pads. At Rs. 6 per napkin, that is almost Rs. 54,000 in a lifetime! This is a huge cost for a lot of women across the world.

In the recent years, with more body awareness and the need to make menstruation products available to all, the age-old methods of using cloth to manage periods is now coming back in a bigger and better way.

The old cloth has now evolved to become comfortable re-usable sanitary napkins with all the practicality of disposable pads! Along with these re-usable cloth napkins, menstrual cups are also becoming popular. But in general re-usable sanitary napkins win as alternatives owing to them being external use products, financially savvy and environmentally friendly. Unipads has on offer some wonderfully made re-usable sanitary napkins.

Re-usable sanitary pads are also quite popular in low-income communities such as South Africa thanks to the non-profit organizations upliftment endeavours in those areas. Furthermore, what ads to the convenience of use is that cleaning cloth pads is easy: you just soak them in water to remove stains, wash them with soap and hang them outside to dry. These can then be stored and re-used again upto 60 washes saving you the cost or re-investing in buying new ones.