Building Incinerators to Protect the Environment
Habitation for Empowerment Network together with its partners reached out to SevenHills Schools in Buikwe District for Menstrual Hygiene trainings and management. It was overwhelmingly difficult to agree that many menstruating girls and women dispose off their used sanitary pads in pit latrines and bushes nearby their homes.
No doubt, in Uganda, we are in crisis already. In a month, the estimated 6.6 million menstruating Ugandan women and girls use disposal pads. 52% of menstruating women generate an estimated 26.4 million pieces of single use non-biodegradable pads, period plastic, containing medical waste. And this harmful waste is mostly ending up in landfills, fresh water bodies, pit latrines, sewage systems, among others.
“Gosh, for the 40 years that I menstruated, I never ever thought of managing menstruation without single-use disposable pads. Assuming I menstruated on average three days in a month and each day I used four pieces of disposable pads, during my menstruation lifecycle, I generated 5,760 pieces of period plastic” Says Ritah a school senior woman and community Health worker in Buikwe district.
This huge public health and environmental crisis is not being talked about. It may be too late for us, but it is not too late for millions of other women and girls in Uganda to adopt best practice by reverting to options that generate no or little waste and certainly no period plastic waste.
The Solution
A good starting point is to smash menstruation stigma and let’s talk menstruation and disposal of pads. Habitation for Empowerment Network is building incinerators in communities and schools attached to the toilets and has designed a self deposit system to deposit the used sanitary pad directly into the incinerator where the used sanitary pads are burnt as water is boiled to enable girls and women use clean boiled water for bathing. We invite you to join us in this noble cause so as to stem the spread of diseases and to protect the environment.
READ MORE: Water, Sanitation & Hygiene – Bank A Pad Program
