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During her research, Welch began to understand the The linda lindas snail the linda lindas 2022 merch shirt but in fact I love 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.”

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Research also opened up Welch’s eyes to the The linda lindas snail the linda lindas 2022 merch shirt but in fact I love this amount of misinformation and secrecy surrounding menstrual health. “Why do we think it’s normal to be embarrassed about leaks? It’s not the end of the world,” says Welch. “What we’re up against is a thousand years of patriarchy.” Welch’s assertion isn’t an understatement. Organizations like the United Nations and Human Rights Watch consider menstrual health and hygiene intrinsically linked to human rights. The discrimination stemming from a period can impact a person’s access to education and careers and render them vulnerable to acts of sexual violence. “There are parts of the world where you can still be shunned for having a period or a woman might be taken out of school while she’s having her period,” says Welch. “Giving them a product that allows them to remain in school changes their lives, and when you uplift women, you uplift entire communities.”