FOR BODY & PLANET

A Kerala-based social enterprise built on spiritual and humanitarian values is out to provide rural women access to low-cost, eco-friendly, reusable cloth pads

- Manasvi Jerath

As co-director of Amrita SeRVe, a project of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, an NGO with consultative status to the UN’s ECOSOC, Anju Bist has travelled to the most backward village clusters in 20 states of India, helping set up initiatives for sustainable development. In 2017, the Kerala-based NGO developed reusable pads from banana fibre and cotton cloth, called Saukhyam.

Since 2017, Anju has been leading the Saukhyam team of over 30 volunteers and staff engaged in the production and sale of these pads, which have won awards nationally and internationally. Over 50,000 pads have been sold in three years, helping prevent the emission of carbon dioxide and reducing non-biodegradable menstrual waste.

Anju obtained her MBA and MS from the University of Maryland at College Park in the US and worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers thereafter. In 2003, she moved back to India and during the next decade was part of Amrita University where she taught environmental sciences and headed the team for web communication.

We asked her about Saukhyam and the advantages of cloth pads.

What was the motivation behind launching a brand of reusable pads?

Reusable pads solve the problem of waste and help mitigate climate change to some extent. If every menstruating woman and girl in India used disposable pads, then a whopping 4,87,50,00,000 soiled pads would be discarded every month! These would continue to pollute the planet for a long time.

Another well-kept industry secret is the fact that trees are cut to make the cellulose fibre, which is the absorbent material in most disposable pads available today. The link between disposable sanitary napkins and climate change is finally being acknowledged now.