Bathroom Dreams, The Environment, and Menstrual Care

 It all started with a bathroom dream. I am in a bathroom stall, the exposing dream-kind where the top half of the door is missing. I am trying to squish my tampon into the receptacle on the floor between the stalls. But what I am scrunching into the trash is a huge plastic take-out container, the kind made to look like cardboard but isn’t. It won’t fit, it is so big, and I feel bad creating so much waste. The receptacle is already full of these tampons, and my hand touches them as I try to push mine in. I stand up and look at Latin American farmers, husband and wife with a child, who are gazing in at me. Green plants are growing out between my knuckles and spreading down the back of my hand. I try to pluck them, but they keep growing. I joke about needing to mow it, somewhat nervously. They don’t seem taken-aback at all.

I have been thinking about writing a post about this dream with its undeniable message about my almost life-long use of tampons. All that waste. It no longer fits into the receptacle. Before sleep I often ask my dreams a question such as, “How can I help with the environment?” Not all dreams answer so directly, but this dream gives a simple message. There is an equally simple, impactful, and actionable solution.

I am not used to, nor necessarily comfortable with, writing about female hygiene and menstruation. But recently my husband saw something on a CT scan of a pelvis he didn’t recognize, never having seen it before. Also, a dream friend posted about periods, which re-inspired me to commit to sharing my story sooner rather than later. I mean, I am fifty-three . . . .

And then the New York Times just published a headline that made me tilt my head the way a dog does when he’s trying to figure out what you have just said to him, How Climate Change is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive. According to the article, “The price of Tampax, the tampon giant that sells 4.5 billion boxes globally each year, started climbing last year. And another quote, the price of tampons jumped “from $9 to $11, said Vanessa Skelton . . . . That’s a regular monthly expense.” Expenses aside for a moment, “4.5 billion boxes [of tampons] globally each year” refers to just one menstrual product company, not all of them. And that doesn’t even cover pads. Yes, climate change is, of course, on a much larger scale than tampon pollution. But billions of tampons going into landfills each year is one of countless threats to our already choked earth. And by 2040, the article surmises, they will likely be made from polyester, a plastic/petroleum product. So, the headline caused me some cognitive dissonance. Like, is this the right headline, to be contrasting the menstrual product industry with climate change?

The point of Coral Davenport’s article is that climate-change-induced megadroughts, severe flooding, wildfires, and the drying up of a major US aquifer, the Ogallala Aquifer, is skyrocketing the price of cotton, and therefore the cost of tampons, cloth diapers, jeans and a host of other products. Almost half of the regions where cotton is typically grown will face a “high or very high climate risk” by 2040. Future yields of the kind of cotton used to make tampons could drop by 40%. This, and all impacts of climate change, are causes for concern.

The point of this post is that luckily there’s an alternative to tampons (which, even in cotton, can take up to 800 years to decompose) and the often-plastic applicators and wrappers that accompany them. A woman buys this device once, maybe twice if she gives birth and her vagina widens. Why is this product rarely discussed or advertised? Why did I only ever hear about it from one friend, who for years told me how amazing it was? Why did it seem so fringe that I wasn’t ready to make the switch? Why do we still suffer from the stigma and secrecy of menstrual blood when long ago it was revered for being the sign of a woman’s fertility, her connection to Earth’s abundance, her relationship with the cycles of the moon, her special power to bleed and not die, and when it was ritualistically sprinkled on the crops to secure their abundance?

What my husband had to look up online, to determine what the upside-down bell-like shape was in the CT scan of a woman’s pelvic region, is what I have been using instead of tampons since the 2020 dream I had when I asked frequently before sleep, what I could do for the environment.

It is called a Keeper (or a Diva Cup, a MeLuna Cup, a Cora Cup, a Lena Cup, and more). For those of you who haven’t heard about it, it is a long-term, reusable silicon cup that catches the flow of blood, which is periodically poured into the toilet. Admittedly, it is potentially a bit messier for your hands on heavy flow days, and therefore more of a mental hurdle in multi-stall bathrooms where you must wash your hands in front of others. People might see what’s on the backs of your hands. Small price to pay for the environment and, well, for the price.

I knew immediately after the dream that I needed to commit, in these last years of my flow, to a more sustainable way of releasing my menstrual blood. A way that doesn’t put so much strain on the earth through the cyclical, serial, single-use of so much unnecessary waste. I can take a step toward greener agency (my greening hand) through this small, very personal act. Using a menstrual cup was so socially obscure that my contemplating it was a mental hurdle. I wish it were more mainstream. I wish that I had started using it years earlier. At least some Gen-Z women I know use them— the next generation. It’s a start. Let’s talk about it more, and ask our dreams how we can help. Sometimes we get an actionable step.