The bloody truth | Sephra Abraham | TEDxHECParis
Transcriber: Josephine O'Donnell Reviewer: Peter van de Ven So, from what I've heard, there are around 72 women in the audience today, including myself. And if I were to calculate the average number of disposable menstrual products that we're all sending to the landfill in one year, then that figure is around - 72 of us times 12 products a month, that's a rather conservative figure, I know, times 12 months of the year - that's giving us a figure of around 10,368 disposable menstrual products in just one year. That's like a carbon footprint of around 400kg, or kilograms, of carbon dioxide. That's like one person driving a car for 10 days straight. And at any given point of time, there are over 800 million menstruating women on planet earth. Let me give you some time to work with that figure. So, how is it that we're not made to think about what a big impact we have because of our menstruation? Instead, we're made to feel bad about not taking our reusable cloth bag to the grocery store. When, in fact, one conventionally made sanitary napkin is the equivalent of four plastic bags. What's happening? What is this gap in information regarding menstruation and menstrual products? I mean, think about it. If a room full of people is sending over 10,000 products, what's the global figure look like? You saw that right. It's over 144 billion menstrual products being sent by our kind to the landfill in just one year. That's like a carbon footprint of over 5.3 million tons of carbon dioxide. To give you an equivalent for all my travel lovers in the audience, that's like one of you catching 400,000 return flights from Paris to Los Angeles. And we're also speaking of these disposable menstrual products that could last from 500 to 800 years in landfills. And in landfills, we have garbage pickers who are manually segregating through all of our waste, especially in developing countries. So, what happens when they have to come in contact and open our bloody, soiled menstrual products? We're exposing them to a plethora of disease causing micro-organisms: HIV, salmonella, E-coli, just to name a few. This gives us a good environmental, external view of the problem. Let's narrow it down to something I like to call internal pollution. When was the last time any of you sat down and thought, What's in my sanitary napkin? What's my tampon made out of? Of course, other than the generic plastics. Well, there's rayon in both these products, which is a synthetic fibre which when bleached releases a by-product known as a dioxin. Now, dioxins are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as probable carcinogens. Then, we have fragrances that lace all these products. Why? Because our menstrual cycle is supposed to smell like flowers, am I right? Well, no, of course not! But these companies are unwilling to even list ingredients on their packaging. Why? And then there is the problem of GMO cotton. GMO cotton is found inside of our products, and they consume over 25 percent of the world's pesticides. A concotion of dioxins, fragrances, pesticides. I don't know if that's something that should be even near your vaginal cavity, forget it being shoved up inside of it. I mean, this is such a big issue, so why aren't we discussing it more freely and openly? A simple, yet complex reason in answer for that might be that menstruation is still considered a taboo on a global scale to this very day. To give you an extent of how stigmatised this natural bodily function is, think of this: in the last six months itself, a 14-year-old girl in the south of India was made to stay outside of her house, in a flimsy little hut, because she was on her menstrual cycle. And all of this done despite the fact that a cyclone was about to hit the village. She died in that cyclone, while the rest of her family escaped unscathed. Then, in Nepal, we have this. That's a menstrual hut, where women are made to stay every single month of their menstruation. It's a system called Chhaupadi. Though criminalised, it is still followed in remote villages of Nepal. So, similarly, a woman and her two sons had to spend the night in one of these. And they lit a fire because it was a cold night. The next morning, all three of them were found dead because of suffocation. In other parts of Asia and Africa, women are routinely kept away from common spaces in households, from their kitchens. They're not allowed to participate in religious ceremonies and in some cases not even allowed to touch other people in fear of contaminating them by just being on their menstrual cycle. If we move out of this context, maybe in other countries, where the problem of superstition and taboo doesn't exist in this form, we have the problem of accessibilty. Did you know, in the United States of America alone, there are an estimated 200,000 homeless women who struggle with access to menstrual products on a monthly basis. So, it was all this information, and much, much, much more, that made me join this organisation: Red is the New Green. It was started by Deane De Menezes in Mumbai, India. So, what does our work really do? For starters, we really focus on educating the masses about menstruation and menstrual health. So, we conduct menstrual-health and hygiene awareness sessions for adolescents, educators, parents all across the country of India, irrespective of their gender. And in these sessions, we talk to girls about a lot of menstrual problems they might face and what they really experienced the first time they got their menstrual cycle. We heard some shocking stories. Over 70 percent of Indian girls had no idea what a menstrual cycle was when they got their first period. In fact, some of these very girls that we spoke to had some crazy stories to tell us. Some of them thought they had blood cancer. Worse, some of them thought that they were going to bleed out dry when they got their first period. This makes us realise how important it is just to educate yourself and talk about menstruation. To complement this, we also advocate the cause of sustainable menstrual products. As seen here, we speak about menstrual cups, period underwear, reusable cloth pads, as well as organic-cotton made tampons. Then, to address the accessiblity issue of menstrual products, we help with the installation of low-cost sanitary-napkin dispensers. And we help install them wherever the need might be: schools, hospitals, offices, everywhere. And then, to combat the very problem of plastic pollution, we also help install electrical incinerators. An electical incinerator converts your plastic pads to sterile ash at a temperature of around 300 degrees Celsius. This process does release a few toxic gases, but as we speak, right now, there's new technology being developed to convert those very toxic gases to electricity back for the organisation that it's going to be installed in. Technology is doing some great things. And I also know that I've given you guys a lot of information for one session. So, what is it that I want you to take away from today's talk? For starters, the first and the most important thing: we need to be talking about this subject. We need to make menstruation great again. (Laughter) And I am speaking to each and every one of you in the audience today, irrespective of your sex. I mean, when did we start stigmatising something that's as natural as breathing? All of you here were born because of that very cycle. It's something to be in awe of. The only way we can kick the taboo is if we talk about it. And then, secondly, to all my menstruating friends here who are currently still using disposable, conventional menstrual products: think about the sustainable alternatives that you've seen here today and that exist in the market. I mean, if one of you invests in a menstrual cup, or cloth pads, as seen right here, you will be eliminating over 144 products from reaching the landfill. Just one of you. And speaking of a menstrual cup, an investment of just 30 dollars can last you at least five years. In that same amount of time, you would have spent around 300 dollars on tampons. The choice is yours. Choose wisely. And lastly, right here in Paris, we conducted two menstrual-health and hygiene awareness sessions. Attended by 26 women and four men. Yes! And out of those 26, we had eight women who chose to empower themselves with the right information, and they made sustainable switches. Thanks to them, there are 1,000 fewer products reaching the landfill just by the end of 2019. So, it all began with eight women who were crazy enough to listen to another woman fire away about menstruation. What's different today in an audience of 72? It's all about knowing the bloody truth and going with the flow. Thank you. (Cheering) (Applause)