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)
