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Bloody Good Fun

Tampons Save Your Day, Could They Save the Planet?

by Zoe Chevat | 4:17 pm, September 7th, 2012


Don’t worry if you were skimming in your e-reader and did a double-take. You read that one right. In a flurry of fact-finding this Friday, we came across this little gem of information, detailing how rejected or recalled tampon batches are shipped off and made into “fuel pellets”. (Also, I was unaware of stolen sub-par feminine products being sold on eBay, in a “tampon gray market”. The more you know!) The pellets are burned along with coal to “augment the fossil fuel’s power in furnaces”.

Say what???

According to the patent technology holder, the resin, batting, and other synthetic layers in these lady-time aids are more than acceptable as fuel. This does bring to mind a rather farcical post-Apocalyptic fossil fuel scenario, with groups of women huddled around fires, tossing in metal-contaminated tampons (a common reason for product recall) to keep the world going. But I digress into flights of Stephensonian fancy. The point here is anything that makes us more green, well, goes.

As Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan put it so well, if defective tampons are the key to clean energy, it does give the phrase “No Blood For Oil” a whole new meaning. Bad puns, and a bizarre tale of a secret online defective-tampon trade? We are all over this. We just wouldn’t buy our monthly share of wondersticks on eBay, we were you.

(via Jezebel)

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  • http://sdhardie.tumblr.com Sheila

    Tampons are very bad for our bodies. Get a cup! It’s better for your health AND the planet. Win/win.

  • Elizabeth

    tampons are excellent fire starting materials, so I keep a few in my hiking survival kit at all times.

  • http://twitter.com/diefrankenmaus Kate

    I LOVED a survival article I saw once that explained how a tampon can be one of the most useful things to bring on a trip. Use the applicator as a bobber for fishing! Use it as an improvised water “filter!” Super-absorbent for wounds!

  • Anonymous

    This sounds like something Jerry Della Femina came up with when he, and a bunch of other advertising men, visited the Kotex plant in Batavia, IL, back in the 60s. They were brainstorming alternate uses for tampons, and someone suggested using tampons as torches for dwarves. Did I mention that these guys were really drunk?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1064437317 Thalia Sutton

    Love it, and the tone of your article too.

    Reminds me of a book I read, detailing US occupation efforts in Japan just after the end of WWII. A massive parcel of supplies was air dropped near Tokyo; the neighborhood people gathered around, men and women both. When the contents were being divied up, some packages of “long, thin cotton strips” were found. An argument broke out that went like this, as the book stated:

    Women: “Hey, let the women have those. Give them here.”

    Guys handing out the stuff: “What are you talking about. These are for starting fires.”

    And then the men took them and the women didn’t get any.

    And then lol, this article. Good feelings, right here.

  • Nicole Kiser

    Oooh, someone else knows about “the cups”. :3

  • Nina

    Eh, the way you put it, it sounds so much like yet another responsibility rather than a win/win. Doing stuff for my health usually means sacrificing something I want to do (eating gobs of chocolate, sitting in front of the computer instead of going for a jog). Same for doing stuff for the planet (does ANYONE enjoy sorting their recyclables into 12 different categories??).

    You forgot to mention that cups are comfier and more convenient than tampons, which is the real reason I use mine. I remember when I used tampons and I had to stop to think before I picked an absorbency, because picking one that was too low meant I would be bleeding into my underwear, but picking one that was too high meant I would be pulling dry cotton out of my vagina (WHICH IS THE WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD oh god). I remember worrying about TSS if I kept in my tampon for more than 8 hours, which made it impossible to sleep in when on my period (which is like, the time of the month when I most want to sleep in). I remember several occasions of running out of tampons in the middle of the night, or when camping, or somewhere else I couldn’t just go down to the drugstore. I remember lots of ruined undies on my heavy days, when an overnight tampon will only last me 4 hours. And yet I remember loving tampons because they were better than the other mainstream alternative, the plasticky, diapery, disposable pad.

    The cup comes with its own problems, like a high learning curve — it took me several cycles to learn how to put it in so it wouldn’t leak, and take it out without making a Carrie-like scene in my bathroom. It took me longer before I could cleanly and confidently change it in a public bathroom. (Thankfully the cup holds A LOT of blood!) But man, it is SO WORTH IT.

  • http://sdhardie.tumblr.com Sheila

    You are absolutely right: there is a multitude of reasons why cups are better than tampons. I agree that there is a bit of a learning curve, but no worse for me than when I first started using tampons. (And I agree… the dry-cotton thing honestly made me cry on numerous occasions.) I just used a backup liner/pad for the first couple of cycles with the cup, and all was well. I’m almost two years in now, and I will absolutely NEVER go back to painful tampons. My cramps have all but disappeared, too, since using my cup. I just wish more women would break free of the programming and give one a try. It’s really not as “icky” as it seems at first.

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