Study for Three Mainstream Brands

Western Sydney
University
Percentage of plastic in Sanitry Napkins
Literature Review
Komalpreet Kaur
09 April 2020
Abstract
The process of menstruation is one of the most important and healthy proce-
dure in the life of women but the utilisation of the products to maintain hygiene
during the menstrualcycle within a woman are not healthy enough for the body
of the woman and also for the environment.The menstrualhygiene products has
to be utilised and transferred to you are waste disposalonce it has been used.
However, the content of plastic within the products are causing severe problems to
the environment and the surroundings.The literature review has been developed
to represent the researchers done by previous authors focusing on the issue and if
there has been any solution presented for the problem.
Signature:Komalpreet Kaur Date:
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Contents
1 Background 1
2 Literature Review 1
3 Findings of the Literature 2
4 Gap in the Literature 3
1 Background
One of the most natural and healthy parts of life is menstruation that occurs in the bod
of a woman.In some cultures it is celebrated but in some culture it is also considered as
a Taboo.The variety in culture impact on the utilisation of menstrual hygiene product
and how these products are disposed.This does not only have affects to our own health
but also impact on the health of the environment, land fill, and other surrounding peopl
Most hygiene products are reported to be containing plastics and it is also found that
they are not disposed properly to which issues arise (Elledge et al., 2018).These issues
are mostly impacting upon the environmental areas where the normal which products a
disposed of in landfill or beaches that might pollute the oceans around the entire world
This is why several researches has been conducted by different authors so that the issu
regarding the disposalof menstrualhygiene products and the plastics in them can be
solved with an effective strategy utilization.
Figure 1:UWS logo
2 Literature Review
The procedure of literature review is continued in this particular study to establish an
understanding ofthe research is that has been conducted by different authors and the
collected information that would enable a strong foothold about the research topic.The
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journalpaper selected for this purpose has to be selected as per their alignment and
relevance to the research topic.The selected research papers are then reviewed according
to the relevance of the studies to the research topic and then information regarding the
topic is listed and discussed in details one by one with proper credibility provided to the
originalauthor.Following is the review of literature taken for analysing the researches
done by severalresearchers and authors based on the topic of plastics used in sanitary
pads on menstrual products
3 Findings of the Literature
According to the author (Scorgie et al.,2016),some conventionalmenstrualhygiene
products have been reported to have a high percentage of plastic content.The amount
of plastic found in all these product are found to be about 90 per cent.Considering the
content of a menstrualhygiene products and the presence of plastic in them,it can be
said that one menstrualhygiene pad is equivalent to about four different plastic bags.
There are other variants of menstrual hygiene products as well and one of them is know
as Tampons.Tampons are visually undetectable of plastics but there is a utility of plastic
in developing and manufacturing tampons as well.Even with the string that is attached
at the end ofa single tampon has plastic in them along with the plastic applicators
made from polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) (Park et al.,2019).All the rest
of a menstrualhygiene product is prepared out of wood pulp,tampons content cotton,
rayon and a combination of polythene product.From another research presented by the
author(Bhattacharjee,2019),the research has been conducted in this particular paper
with the utilisation of the study for three mainstream brands.After the study of all the
brand and their product it was found that on an average there was 36 grams of plastic
every packet of a menstrual product.It can also be said that based on this calculation,
it was about 2.4 gram of plastic in every menstrual pad and the outer pack also contain
about 3.5 grams of plastic.It was also a report presented who research that about 11,000
menstrual items is used by a woman on an average in the entire lifetime (Pachauri et a
2019).Therefore if one menstrual pad is equivalent to 4 plastic bags excluded the plasti
content in the outer covering, then it would be a problematic issue in understanding ho
much ofdispose plastic does a woman use in their entire lifetime resulting to negative
effects and impacts on the environment.There was a research conducted by the author
(Hennegan,2019),based on the UK coastline where it was found that on an average
there was a record of about 4.9 pieces of period ways every hundred metres of the bea
which results into about 2 million items along the entire United Kingdom coastline.The
author also represents the fact that the menstrual products are one of the most commo
items found on the sea shores in Europe.Therefore, globally in similar situations in the
other parts of the world the Global selling and disposal of plastic filled period products
are found to be providing a lot ofproblems not only the environment but also to the
human body.The author (Soniet al., 2019) ,states that alarm 49 per cent ofrural
women utilise the sanitary napkins in neat where in urban areas the percentage rises to
about 80 per cent.As per the research constituted the household in a specific area in
Australia, it was found that the collected sanitary napkins disposed in a regular basis w
about 45 per cent of the total household garbage.There has been an invention about the
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plastic free sanitary napkins in 1995 that would be repaired out ofnaturalingredients
with 100 per cent biodegradable qualities (Bose and Singh,2019).These are found to
be usefulfor the skin as wellbut the author represents the feedback from the uses of
the menstrualproducts that the proper marketing ofthe solution utilising plastic free
biodegradable menstrualhygiene products is not done properly yet and this is why the
plastic free products are even used at random at every instance.
4 Gap in the Literature
The problem that has been found in this particular paper about the wrong way of dis-
posing menstrual hygiene products that have the highest constitution of plastic product
The way that these products are disposed are also impacting negatively on the environ
ment and the people all around, which has also been depicted in the research conducte
different authors in their particular papers.There has also been presentation of a solution
about using a menstrual hygiene product that is made up just by natural biodegradable
products which is good for the skin as well.However it is not found what the authors
have done to make sure that the product is presented wellin the market by marketing
strategies applied to the product distribution.Naturally this gap has made another is-
sue about the people being less aware ofthe biodegradable period products,using the
plastic hygiene products instead.This can form the base of research in future where the
marketing strategies of the biodegradable menstrual hygiene products can be utilised f
making the women aware about the availability of this product which is good for their
skin and not harmful to the environment as well.
References
Bhattacharjee, M. (2019).Menstrual hygiene management during emergencies:A study
of challenges faced by women and adolescent girls living in flood-prone districts in
assam.Indian Journalof Gender Studies, 26(1-2):96–107.
Bose, S. and Singh, R. (2019).Energy recovery from proper recycling and incineration of
waste absorbent hygiene products for environmentalsustainability.Technicalreport,
EasyChair.
Elledge,M. F., Muralidharan,A., Parker,A., Ravndal,K. T., Siddiqui,M., Toolaram,
A. P., and Woodward, K. P. (2018). Menstrual hygiene management and waste dispos
in low and middle income countries—a review of the literature.Internationaljournal
of environmentalresearch and public health, 15(11):2562.
Hennegan,J. (2019).Inserting informed choice into globalmenstrualproduct use and
provision.The Lancet Public Health, 4(8):e361–e362.
Pachauri, A., Shah, P., Almroth, B. C., Sevilla, N. P., and Narasimhan, M. (2019).Safe
and sustainable waste management of self care products.bmj, 365:l1298.
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Park, C. J., Barakat,R., Ulanov,A., Li, Z., Lin, P.-C., Chiu, K., Zhou,S., Perez,P.,
Lee,J., Flaws,J., et al.(2019).Sanitary pads and diapers contain higher phthalate
contents than those in common commercial plastic products.Reproductive Toxicology,
84:114–121.
Scorgie,F., Foster,J., Stadler,J., Phiri, T., Hoppenjans,L., Rees,H., and Muller,N.
(2016). “bitten by shyness”:Menstrual hygiene management, sanitation, and the quest
for privacy in south africa.Medicalanthropology, 35(2):161–176.
Soni, S., Srivastava, M., Jha, S., and Sornapudi, S. D. (2019).Working women’s perspec-
tive on sustainable practices for management of menstruation.Journal of Community
Mobilization and Sustainable Development, 14(2):267–270.
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