The way to manage such menstrual hygiene challenges was shown by the same man, who, around eight years ago, started production of low-cost sanitary napkins for rural women which would operate using simple hand-operated machines. Baroda-based Shyam Bedekar, who runs NGO Vatsalaya Foundation with his wife Swati, soon felt the need for a disposal system in rural areas.
“We started the manufacturing units in 2010, and till now, we have set up 500 such units all over the country. In 2011, when women of various villages got comfortable with using our pads, we realized we were facing another major problem — disposal,” says Bedekar, a textile chemist by profession.
On delving deeper, he realized that most of the women would look shamefaced trying to find a place to dispose the napkins. There came another invention, ‘Ashuddhinashak’, which is an eco-friendly and cost-effective incinerator. Till now, the organization has supplied over 3,000 such incinerators in different parts of the country. Recently, over 100 were installed in the villages of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Bedekar chose terracotta as the raw material as it is environment-friendly and easily camouflages with other belongings of a village. “It looks like a typical earthen urn which the rural women place near common water taps, lake, public toilets or in different lanes,” he says.
The incinerators do not require any fuel or electricity and work on a simple principle. Bedekar says, “Women can drop the napkins inside it through a lid, just like in regular dustbins. Every incinerator has a lower opening which leads to a combustion chamber. Through this opening, fire is lit inside the chamber using old newspapers or dry grass.”
As most of the napkins are made from organic material, they burn easily inside the incinerator. The generated ash can be used as a fertilizer. “The incinerators are not air-tight but closed. Thus, air pollution is not caused,” says Bedekar.
Unlike the electric incinerators, the cost of which can go up to Rs 20-25,000, this one comes for Rs 3,000, which includes packing and transportation charges. “In the last few years, many schools have installed them through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,” adds Bedekar.