Part 2 – Single-Use Products
Gaining even a rough understanding of how many people in the United States alone are using single-use menstrual products helps us to understand how pervasive plastic waste is in our landfills. Again, it is not my intention to shame people who can’t afford more sustainable options or have medical issues that prevent them from using certain products. It is my intention to have fun crunching some numbers (yes, this is what I do for fun on a Saturday night) and getting a sense of how much of an impact our decisions have. If you are in the position to make informed choices, you may find this information interesting.
Now for some more Scientific Wild-Ass Guesses…
Tampons
In trying to imagine the volume of 7280 tampons, I did some more calculations. Sure, a used tampon is bigger once it’s saturated, but it will be compressed in the garbage truck and bulldozed in the landfill. To estimate on the conservative side, we will assume that a used, compressed tampon, crushed under the weight of other garbage in the landfill, is not much larger in volume than an unused tampon. Mine are roughly .5 inches in diameter by 2 inches in length coming out of the wrapping. Again, to make the math easier, we will just assume that the added volume takes up the full space of a rectangular prism (V = l · w · h), rather than the space occupied by a cylinder (V = π · r2 · l).
Now, that is just the tampons themselves. Apparently about 88% of tampon-users in the US buy the kind with applicators (mostly plastic!) and excess packaging around them.[1] Back when I used tampons with applicators, I always bought cardboard, but even most of those have a thin layer of plastic on them for easier insertion. A quick scan down the tampon aisle at the store shows that many if not most options available on the market are plastic. I don’t have any discarded applicators and packaging on hand to measure, but if memory serves me right, they are only slightly larger than the tampon itself. For the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume that when compressed (with some force), the applicator and packaging will take up about half the volume of the tampon.
At that size, 7280 applicator-free tampons would take up just over 2 cubic feet, just smaller than the outer dimensions of our microwave. The volume of waste from tampons with applicators would be just over 3 cubic feet, just smaller than a mini freezer.
Maxi Pads
Since we are assuming the same number of pads and tampons would be used interchangeably for someone using one or the other, our calculations are easier. As I mentioned before, I had a very helpful and understanding friend take some measurements of unused single-use pads and panty liners for me since I don’t have any in my house. Pads vary in size, but the ones in question were 3” x 3.5” x .0625” (1/16 of an inch) when compressed.
At 7280 pads over a lifetime (16 per cycle) and .7 cubic inches per pad, that brings us to 2.76 cubic feet, about halfway in between the total volume of what we calculated for applicator-free tampons (2.11 cu ft) and tampons with applicators (3.16 cu ft).
Panty Liners
Panty liners are even more difficult than pads and tampons as far as usage. The only benefit of using them is shielding underwear against leaks and spotting, not absorbing any significant amounts of blood. According to Huffington Post, the average woman uses 5 liners per cycle,[3] but I think it largely comes down to how effective the other products are and how picky the user is about blood stains in her underwear.
Again, my friend’s measurements bring us to .3 cubic inches per liner, and 5 used per period over a total of 455 periods. The total volume assuming those numbers results in a .4 cubic feet, roughly the size of 3 reams of 8.5” x 11” paper.
Now for some real fun…
We throw away a lot of garbage every week, so something the size of a microwave or a beer fridge may not seem like that much, but remember that what goes out in our garbage bags is not compressed. Once our garbage is compacted and bulldozed into a landfill, it takes up significantly less space. These calculations represent how much landfill space will ultimately be taken up by a single person’s menstrual products… and we can expect such items with high plastic content, sealed in a landfill, to be there for centuries to come.
So to get a sense of the additive nature of our individual impacts, I made some estimates about how many tampons and pads are used and thrown out per year in the US. I left the panty liners out of the calculations because I don’t even have an educated guess about how many are really used. Suffice it to say that these estimates are on the conservative side because they don’t even take into account one of the top three products in use.
There are approximately 68 million menstruating women in the US. We’re still sticking with the assumption that everyone uses either tampons or pads. Several sources put the percentage of women who prefer tampons around the 40% mark,[5],[6] so we’ll stick with that for this exercise.
That gives us 27 million women using tampons, putting the total number of tampons (88% of which have applicators)[7] at 4.8 billion (yes, with a B), every year. Neatly stacked and compressed, all of that waste would cover an entire football field (including end zones), to a height of 41 feet.
But wait – there’s more! The remaining 41 million women using pads throw away 10.6 billion of them every year. Stacked and compressed on top of our football field of tampons, the pads would add 70 more feet.
That means our single-use menstrual products result in a block of waste the size of a football field, 11 storeys high, every single year in the US.
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images. Image credit: [8]
Yes, this is a depressing thought – at least for me. Next week, however, we will take a look at reusable alternatives to these single-use items and see if they provide a better option.
Thanks for reading!
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/148432/americans-refuse-give-tampons
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Arctic-King-Freezer-AUFM011AEW-Renewed/dp/B07YYJDYH6/
[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/period-cost-lifetime_n_7258780
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Hammermill-Recycled-Printer-Letter-086820C/dp/B079DH1YGT/
[5] https://newrepublic.com/article/148432/americans-refuse-give-tampons
[6] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-women-dont-use-tampons/
[7] https://newrepublic.com/article/148432/americans-refuse-give-tampons
[8] https://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2019/5/15/18624710/pittsburgh-steelers-looking-to-build-new-sign-into-seating-at-heinz-field-overhead-view-nfl-news
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