City girl to speak for reusable menstrual products at UN meet

Guhar Goyal is among the 75-plus students selected globally for this youth meet

Guhar promotes sustainable menstrual products on the sidelines of a cycling event in Bengaluru.

Disposable sanitary pads constitute 90 per cent plastic and most women in India are unaware of this fact, a study found recently. Incidentally, Guhar Goyal, a school student from Bengaluru, has started talking about the adverse environmental impact of menstrual waste through her project Green Periods, which she will also be presenting at the UN headquarters in New York in December this year.

She is among the 75-plus students selected globally to participate in the 6th edition of the 1M1B Activate Impact Summit at the UN.

1M1B is an UN-accredited non-profit organisation, which mentored Guhar to scale up her school project.

The Class 12 student from Neev Academy in the city says her project has two-fold objectives. One, to popularise sustainable alternatives to single-use sanitary pads, such as reusable cotton pads and menstrual cups. Two, to alleviate ‘period poverty’, which is the inability to afford menstrual products.

Plastic waste generation and social inequality, she observes, is a deterrent in achieving Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN.

So what inspired the 17-year-old to start the project? “The plastic disposable pads are filled with chemicals and I kept getting rashes because of that. That’s when I switched to using reusable cloth pads. The lifestyle change I underwent, encouraged me to share this discovery and experience with other people,” she says.

Later, in collaboration with Stonesoup, an environmental conservation organisation in the city, she raised 1 lakh rupees to buy and distribute menstrual cups to 200 BBMP frontline workers.

This was done on the occasion of International Women’s Day in March this year.

Going forward, she hopes to file a petition to bring sanitary pads under the category of medical products.

She explains why, “This will force the companies to disclose all the contents and chemicals that go into making disposable
pads.”

She also wants to use her social media to reach the young generation, interact with them and encourage them to explore sustainable and safer period products.