JOLENE Olive doesn't take her purse to the bathroom anymore. The 26-year-old is one of a growing number of environmentally conscious Winnipeg women who are swapping pricey boxes of tampons and pads for menstrual cups -- tiny reusable cylinders that sit inside the vagina and collect menstrual blood.
One cup can collect about 100 millilitres of fluid, and women empty it, wash it with soap and re-insert it between two and three times a day. Most cups cost around $40, and can last up to 10 years.
Jolene Olive displays her menstrual cup, which she uses instead of tampons and pads to cut down on waste.
Olive used her menstrual cup for the first time last week, and said she'll never use a tampon again.
"It just seems like there's so much waste -- you hear about all this waste going into landfills from pads and tampons," said Olive, who attends Red River College and is starting her own environmental magazine.
"I sort of did a little calculation of how many (tampons) I've used in my life and I thought, God, it was like 3,600 in 15 years."
Local health food stores have recently seen a surge of women purchasing them.
Organza health and beauty manager Shawn Nesbitt said she orders about a dozen menstrual cups every month for women between the ages of 20 and 40 who want chemical-free, affordable products for their body.
Nesbitt said many women are concerned since most commercial tampons and pads are bleached with chemicals that can be absorbed the body. By comparison, menstrual cups are made from natural rubber or silicone that can't be absorbed by human tissue.
"(Women) are finding that they make sense, environmentally, rather than going through the pads and tampons," Nesbitt said.
Women who use tampons are also at an increased risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) -- a rare disease that occurs when certain strains of bacteria get into the bloodstream. TSS initially causes flu-like symptoms, but can be fatal if left untreated.
Only a handful of cases of TSS have been reported to Health Canada in the last few years, but half were associated with tampon use.
Kris Kurtz, owner of Humboldt's Legacy, said between two and three dozen women are purchasing menstrual cups a month -- a big increase from when the cups were first available 16 years ago. Aside from environmental concerns, she said more women are using the cups for their comfort and accessibility -- they are easier to carry when travelling and women don't need to stock up on pads and tampons.
Andrea von Wichert, 36, first heard about menstrual cups three years ago from a friend who worked long hours in the film industry and didn't have time to run to the washroom to change a pad or tampon. A cup can stay inside a woman for up to 12 hours.
Although it was a bit messy and took a while to adjust to inserting the cup in her body, von Wichert said she no longer worries about getting her period and being unable to find any tampons.
"It's always there, you don't have those: 'Oh my God, I just got my period, what am I going to do?'" she said.
jen.skerritt@freepress.mb.ca
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