It was six months ago that Selin Celikoyar bought her last tampon and switched to a reusable menstrual product called a menstrual disc.

“I had already been wary of tampons from an environmental perspective and also from a biological perspective. I felt that they were very wasteful and expensive to consistently keep buying,” she said.

The flexible discs and other reusable menstrual products are gaining traction as alternatives to the billions of single-use pads and tampons that get tossed into landfills every year. Products such as the discs, silicone cups and period underwear can be reused for years, so they’re cost-effective and long-lasting in addition to helping people reduce waste. The popularity of the reusable alternatives has grown since the pandemic, when it was easier to experiment with period products in the privacy of a home bathroom, according to women’s health experts.

Celikoyar said she used tampons and pads for years because those are the options she grew up knowing about. But when she saw her friend make the switch to a reusable menstrual product known as a menstrual disc, she decided to try it too.

“The experience has been such a game changer,” she said.

Single-Use Products Wind Up in Landfills

About 12 billion disposable pads and 7 billion tampons go into U.S. landfills every year, according to Dr. Luwam Semere, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara. Pads are mostly plastic. Once they’re in the landfill, they take up to 800 years to degrade, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Single-use pads and tampons are by far the most popular period products. Women’s health expert Dr. Navya Mysore said that’s not because they’re better, they’re just usually the first options kids are shown.

“It was often like, ‘What did your mom use? What did your grandma use?’ And that’s how you were introduced into period hygiene,” said Mysore, a primary care physician based in New York City.

Read the full article about reusable menstrual products at WTOP.