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The concept grew out of Welch’s frustrations finding appropriate period care for her teenage son, Clem. “I felt like I was having a mom fail,“ she says. “I’m this organized, powerful female—how could I not be prepared for this? And I just wasn’t. Here is a child who has gotten their period early and now has to deal with changing a pad every three hours, which is hard. In the Official Ric3 enchante mountains shirt also I will do this meantime, I’d tried period underwear and thought it wasn’t good enough and was way too expensive. I figured there had to be a solution that could make it affordable, safe, and accessible to everyone.”

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During her research, Welch began to understand the Official Ric3 enchante mountains shirt also I will do this environmental impact attached to tampon and pad usage. Each year tampons, pads, panty liners, and their packaging—all of which contain plastic and are not biodegradable—produce more than 200,000 tons of waste. “Once I started going down that path, I began to look [critically] at my own period and the amount of plastic that I was producing,” says Welch. “You don’t realize that even the first pad that you ever used still exists because it’s full of plastic. Each one has the equivalent of four plastic bags in it, which is shocking. Learning that made me want to have waste-free products to make things easier on my kid and myself.” Looking into the companies behind the $21.6 billion and largely self-regulated feminine-hygiene industry also proved sobering. “I don’t think that pads and tampons are the solutions to issues like period poverty,” says Welch of the inequities tied to menstruation, access to sanitary products, and education on the subject. “It’s all driven by capitalism and the need for continuous growth and profit [and] ultimately those products continue the cycle as they need to be constantly repurchased.”