Choosing supermarket own-brands or reusable menstrual cups can reduce the cost to one’s wallet and the environmentDenise Preis never needs to buy sanitary pads or tampons. And since first using a silicone menstrual cup more than five years ago,she has saved over £350. “A friend recommended it,” the 41-year-old says. “I’d always used biological tampons and pads, and wasn’t sure I’d like inserting a cup,but I got used to it fairly quickly.” The stay-at-domestic mother says she feels less period pain with the cup and welcomes the ecological benefits, as there is no waste.
Her savings are a welcome respite from the monthly cost of other sanitary products (Preis’s Enna cups cost just under £25 for a pack of two). Current prices range from as dinky as 4p for a Tesco and Morrisons own-brand items to as much as 21p for an Always night pad and 16p for a Tampax Pearl tampon. whether you opt for these familiar brands and use the typical number of 22 products per cycle, and that puts the cost of a period at over £3.50 – more than 10 times that of a menstrual cup per cycle. The cost to the environment may be far higher: plastic tampon applicators can take up to 100 years to degrade and thousands are found in oceans and on beaches around the world.
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Source: guardian.co.uk