Muhamma, a village in Alappuzha district of Kerala, has made a one-of-its-kind record. It has been declared as the 'first synthetic sanitary pad free village in Kerala'.
The local gram panchayat executed the project in 2019 in a bid to tackle menstrual waste in the area.
The local civic body has been encouraging women to switch to reusable pads made of clothes and menstrual cups.
¡°When earlier the grama panchayat with the support of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a Bengaluru based non-profit organization and Vembanad Kayal Samrekshana Samithi had conducted a canal cleaning programme, we found large number of synthetic sanitary pad, which is a severe threat to our environment and nature. So the grama panchayat has decided to execute synthetic sanitary pad free village project with the support of ATREE and Antrix Corporation Limited of ISRO,¡± the panchayat president told The Times of India.
¡°As part of the project, the grama panchayat has given cloth pads and menstrual cups to females by collecting a nominal fee. There are 13308 women in Muhamma. Of them, 6188 having menstruation and 30 percent of them were using old clothes. So, awareness programmes were conducted among them giving importance to cloth pads. Among the above 40 years-old women in the local body, 60 percent of them were using clothes. After the execution of this project, they are using only clothes or cloth pads. A small portion of them have also started to use menstrual cups. Among above 25 years-old women, more than ten percent are using menstrual cups. The women using menstrual cups told us that there is no other better alternative way than the using of menstrual cups. The execution of this project during Covid-19 lockdown has become a big boon and the women in our panchayat don¡¯t want to go shops for buying synthetic sanitary pads,¡± said the panchayat authorities.
They added that as part of the project, 550 cloth pads and 500 menstrual cups have been distributed among women.