Complicated plastics: addressing taboo waste streams to promote user dignity and sustainable consumption.

Details

  • End date: 2025-12-31

While pit latrines are the most common sanitation system in low-income countries, they are often used as trash cans for a range of household solid waste. With the growing use of ‘complicated plastics’ that combine absorbent materials with plastics, such as in the case of menstrual products, this creates challenges for sustainable consumption and environmental protection. On the other side it is important to ensure human dignity, and improve access to safe menstrual management, and promote menstrual health. Although there are growing efforts to increase access to menstrual products globally, there is a significant gap in attention to the lack of adequate disposal and waste management systems to handle the expansion of product use.

This interdisciplinary project aims to assess how poor menstrual waste management leads to negative impacts for users, sanitation systems and the environment, drawing on a case in informal settlements in Kisumu, Kenya. In this context solid waste services are inadequate so menstrual products are often disposed of in pit latrines, causing problem for sanitation services. At the same time menstruation taboos are persistent, resulting in a lack of political will to address these challenges.

Drawing on systems thinking and mixed methods this project focuses on:

  1. i) assessing gaps related to menstrual health in national sanitation policies and plans at a global level;
  2. ii) examining the market of complicated plastic products, including health and environmental risks associated with conventional pad products in Kenya

iii) identifying disposal challenges for menstrual users, as well as waste management barriers and environmental implications faced by sanitation service providers in Kisumu informal settlements.

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Project members

Project leader: Sarah Dickin

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