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. Lets 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.