The Adi Ganga running down South Kolkata’s Tollygunge area, an essential water channel, has now turned into a toxic sewer due to untreated waste discharge. The air around it is unbreathable. People pinch their noses tight when crossing it.
I have witnessed this since childhood, and nothing has changed. Solid waste management is a huge issue India grapples with. Sanitation work follows an exploitative caste hierarchy in this country that finds imposing inhumane working conditions more convenient than pragmatic policies.
What Are Pads Made Of?
They’re made of Super Absorbent Polymers (SAP), and Polyethylene (PE) is used for the waterproof back cover. What keeps it dry is the polypropylene sheet. It comes packaged in non-biodegradable plastic. So, most pads you wear are made of 90% plastic containing carcinogens.
It’s time we consider sustainable alternatives like menstrual cups, biodegradable pads, cloth pads, and more. The government launched biodegradable Suvidha pads at ₹2.50 per pad to be available at Jan Aushadhi stores, but most stores have dwindling stocks revealing inadequate implementation.
Not A Threat To The Environment Alone
Menstrual waste is plastic and biomedical waste. The presence of blood makes it biomedical waste implying that it should be treated before disposal, regularly collected and incinerated; far from what happens.
Burning garbage heaps on roadsides is a common sight. Incineration is a regulated process to burn waste in enclosed spaces at specific temperatures high enough to burn toxic chemicals and prevent them from dispersing into the atmosphere. If burnt under 800°C, plastic releases toxic pollutants like dioxins which are carcinogenic. Even after incineration, plastic doesn’t completely eradicate as highly toxic ashes require disposal too, so all of our sanitary waste ends up in landfills.
Under the Solid Waste Management Rules, pads are classified under domestic hazardous waste, so they are disposed of with household garbage. This poses a massive risk of fatal disease contraction for workers who collect and segregate waste and those who come in direct contact with sewer waste due to the illegal practice of manual scavenging.
Sanitary napkin manufacturers have the sole responsibility to provide a cover for the pad to be wrapped in before disposing of it with dry waste. In places with the absence of waste management facilities, people often burn, bury, or flush used pads. Sanitary napkins make up 45% of menstrual waste. MHAI also reports that 13% of menstrual waste is thrown in ponds, rivers, wells, lakes and roads, 10% in toilets, 9% burnt, and 8% buried as of 2018.
Issues Of Improper Disposal
- Sanitary workers do not have adequate protection or health checkups.
- Irresponsible, unscientific disposal leads to groundwater and surface water contamination. Workers cleaning clogged sewers come in direct contact with toxic waste and human excreta. Despite the 2013 Act prohibiting manual scavenging and rehabilitation of workers, the practice continues.
- Diseases can spread through animals who come in contact with the waste.
- Upon several instances, I’ve been unable to use my university washroom because of pads left open inside dustbins and floors. Toilets with proper water and disposal facilities was a demand that somehow never got fulfilled; moreover, a large part of it depends on users.
I got talking with a worker at our washroom one day. There was no water in the washroom, so we both waited. She said, “The amount of dirt I have to see; I skip my meals on most days.” I’d given her my number and asked her to take photographs of the condition and report it to the person concerned. But the complaints go unheard she said.
I never got to meet her again for a follow-up. When I took it up with a professor, I was asked to find out who to write a letter to for this and I never could. A letter was needed even to fix a broken fan in our classrooms, and naturally, the action was never prompt.
Policies In Recent Years
Revised Solid Waste Management Rules 2016: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) revised Solid Waste Management Rules in 2016. A 2015 directive reads:
- Of 143499 MT/day of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), only 38771 MT/day is treated, and most of it is being disposed of unscientifically causing a public nuisance.
- State municipalities still allow unscientific disposal. They have failed to obtain SPCB/PCC authorization as needed under MSW rules. Both Kolkata and Howrah municipal commissioners received directives on immediate approval with annual reports, proper waste segregation, collection, transportation, and disposal.
- Urging waste segregation at the source level, i.e. our households so as to not put workers to threat.
- Providing personal protection facilities, checkups and immunization to workers.
Red Dot Campaign Pune 2017
SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling), Pune, started the Red Dot campaign in collaboration with PMC, as a response to the 2016 MoEFCC directive by which sanitary waste should be disposed of in clearly marked bags. SWaCH urges people to dispose of menstrual waste wrapped in newspapers marked by a red dot so that workers opening up packets while segregation are spared direct contact.
As of January 2020, MoEFCC Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Centre would make it compulsory to dispose of sanitary pads in biodegradable bags to be provided by manufacturers.
Choose your menstrual product wisely and next time you think of tossing it into the bin, remember there is a bigger chain that begins with how you choose to get rid of it.
The author is a part of the current batch of the #PeriodParGyan Writer’s Training Program