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You may remember seeing past advertisements for period products featuring blue dye liquid to represent blood.
In recent years, as periods have become more mainstream, there is a growing push-back on the media representation of periods. This has led to many people standing up to say “Hey, my period is not blue!”
But period product brands still face road blocks to this day with representing period blood as red. Period underwear brand Modibodi just recently had to fight Facebook to overturn the decision to remove their social media ad that showed real coloured blood. Red blood?! How shocking!
You can see the video here:
Luckily, Modibodi were successful in having the decision from Facebook overturned.
So our periods used to be blue, but now we accept they’re actually red. But really, if you’re using Modibodi (or any other reusable period product), your period is actually green!
Zero Waste Period
For a number of years now, I’ve managed to have a zero waste period. It does feel pretty good to no longer fill up one of those little bathroom bins with disposable period waste every month.
To be honest though, I didn’t start using reusable period products to have a zero waste period. Nope, I wasn’t on an eco friendly crusade. Rather, I was searching for alternatives to pads and tampons so I could have a better period experience! Zero waste menstruation was simply a beneficial bi-product of this.
I grew up mostly using pads. Occasionally I would wear tampons, but my main choice of period product was pads. That’s not to say I liked them, oh no, I hated wearing pads. They would always make me feel hot, sticky, sweaty, irritated and smelly! This meant, whenever I was wearing a pad, I would never feel fresh. And I’m pretty conscious about feeling fresh.
While I was on hormonal contraception, also known as birth control, I would always skip my period when it was going to inconvenience me. When I stopped taking birth control, I was all of a sudden stuck with having to deal with my period whenever it came. This is really what sparked me to look for some other way to manage my period. Pads were not cutting it anymore, I thought surely there must be a better way.
How to manage periods without pads
My Google search for how to manage periods without pads led me to discover the menstrual cup first. Even though I never really used tampons, and a menstrual cup is like the closest thing to reusable tampons we’re probably going to get, I didn’t hesitate to try out a menstrual cup.
Menstrual Cups
If you’re wondering what a menstrual cup is…it’s a soft cup, usually made from medical grade silicone. It’s folded and inserted into the vagina. Inside the vagina it will pop open and form a suction seal to the vagina walls. The menstrual cup will sit below the cervix, where it will collect the menstrual fluid, rather than absorbing it like a tampon would. You can learn more about menstrual cups here.
I didn’t bother to do any research to learn what would be the best menstrual cup for me. I just jumped straight in and ordered a Diva Cup.
Luckily, once I got over the initial learning curve, this worked out fairly well for me.
Fluking it though, isn’t something I would recommend for anyone looking to try a menstrual cup for the first time.
If that’s you, I have created a free guide to choosing your best menstrual cup which I will send direct to your inbox if you enter your details below:
This guide will help you make sense of all the menstrual cup options and different size menstrual cups, to choose one that will be right for you.
Choosing a menstrual cup that’s right for you isn’t as straightforward as choosing any old one, so you do need to do some research first. But don’t worry it’s worth it!
Period Underwear
Soon after discovering menstrual cups, I also discovered Modibodi period underwear, also called period panties in some parts of the world. I suppose they’re a bit like reusable pads except there is no pad to detach from the underwear. They are just like normal underwear with the absorbent gusset inbuilt into the underwear. If you want to read more about period underwear, you can do that here.
Since discovering Modibodi, I’ve become a little bit obsessed. They are just so good. There are other brands of period underwear out there, and no doubt more to come, but Modibodi are the OG. They only do leak-proof underwear, so they’re seriously focused on producing a great product. They have the most fab range of styles, colours, patterns and sizes. If you want to, you can check them all out here.
I started using a menstrual cup and then later period underwear from 2015. So it’s now been a good five years since I began ditching the disposable products. And for the last few years I have had a 100% plastic free period.
We are pretty lucky to have access to such a range of menstrual products to manage our periods these days. Back when my mum was younger there was no choice. She had to wear a menstrual belt that she clipped her pad into – but that’s a story for another day!
If you are looking for zero waste period options, I can definitely recommend either a menstrual cup or period underwear, or as I use, a combination of both.