“We’re nonetheless a campaigning mannequin,” Natracare founder Susie Hewson tells Inexperienced Points.
As we communicate, Gen Z-focused branding and progressive, direct language (aka the phrase “vagina”) dot the interval care enterprise. The model new children on the scene is not going to use blue liquid of their promoting, nor will they go for nasty chemical compounds or wasteful packaging. Nevertheless sooner than ethical, eco-friendly interval care was cool, a feminist and environmentalist all through the pond paved one of the best ways, bringing pure tampons to the forefront.
Article continues below business
Once more in 1989, Susie Hewson — the founder and proprietor of award-winning sustainable interval, incontinence, and maternity product agency Canning (a 1% for the Planet member)— launched the world’s first pure, plastic-free tampon.
“I’m proud to have been radicalized in environmental pondering,” Hewson solely tells Inexperienced Points via video interview. The “eco-warrior” has joined environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeaceusing her voice for good.
Article continues below business
For Hewson, launching a line of biodegradable, home-compostable interval merchandise free of plastics, fragrances, rayons, dyes, and chlorine is activism in and of itself.
“People ask me points as a enterprise particular person, and I check out myself and say, ‘Am I a enterprise particular person? I’m an activist,'” she tells us.
In celebration of Earth Day 2024, the theme of which is Planet vs. Plastics, we spoke with Susie Hewson about her disruption of the toxic menstrual product enterprise.
Susie Hewson took movement after finding out regarding the catastrophic impression of plastics and dioxin air air pollution throughout the Nineteen Eighties.
After years of working as a graphic designer in London, Hewson “escaped” to Sweden, the place she studied on the Faculty of Gothenburg.
“[There was a brook that] was a novel coloration every day. It was sometimes inexperienced, sometimes a murky orange,” she explains. After investigating, she realized of a close-by pulping facility along with a producer of merchandise like youngster diapers and sanitary pads, which polluted intently.
Article continues below business
“Greenpeace was campaigning in Canada in opposition to dumping of chlorine gasoline at sea, which is dioxin,” she continues. “I seen a program on TV about dioxin air air pollution (World in Movement) and the way in which it is created and promoted through merchandise made out of paper. …The utilization of chlorine gasoline was the go-to course of for bleaching.”
Article continues below business
Hewson was horrified to check that fish in waters surrounding pulping enterprise vegetation had developed most cancers. Hewson says this toxic byproduct is “like Agent Orange.”
In line with the U.S. EPA, dioxin — a generic time interval for “a bunch of 75 related chemical compounds usually often known as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins” — is “a doable human carcinogen.”
Article continues below business
“The enterprise itself, their idea was, ‘There’s so little finally product, it’s not going to impression you.’ Correctly, no one’s ever measured the toxicological impression,” she particulars.
As a mother of two youthful boys, Hewson was furious, significantly when campaigning obtained her nowhere.
“That was the aim the place my activism grew to turn into movement to produce a product.”
The manipulative petrochemical-infused tampon enterprise impressed Susie Hewson to behave: “Promoting tips the world.”
“The projected improvement of plastics manufacturing from 2025 to 2050 is to go from one factor like 445 million metric tons to 590 million metric tons,” she says of virgin plastic, highlighting the extraction of petroleum, a nonrenewable helpful useful resource.
Natracare’s leak-proof pad film is a “licensed biopolymer made out of GM-free plant starch,” a renewable helpful useful resource. “The bioplastics we use are home-compost licensed,” she explains.
Article continues below business
As for that “world’s first” progressive tampon, Hewson felt impressed to stand up and inform menstruators who’d prolonged been saved at midnight.
“The [tampon] product you might be using should not be cotton, it’s made on this technique, it’s 90 p.c plastic, it’s full of petrochemicals, super absorbent, there are microplastics.”
The Seisen Worldwide College notes that petrochemical publicity is linked to a slew of conditions, along with allergic reactions, despair, nervousness, begin defects, infertility, sickhouse syndrome, and most cancers.
Article continues below business
Natracare tampons are manufactured from merely 100 laptop pure cotton, its pads and liners perform an absorbent core manufactured from PEFC licensed sustainable wood pulp from Finland, and the merchandise are chlorine-free.
Susie Hewson’s suggestion for purchasing menstrual merchandise this Earth Day and previous: “Ask well-researched questions sooner than searching for.”
Hewson calls the interval care enterprise “a mine self-discipline of absence of full ingredient itemizing and smoke and mirrors promoting messages.” She encourages prospects to “seek for validations that are neutral and scientifically credible, and by no means generated by a producer.”
Article continues below business
To cut down on plastic, Hewson moreover highlights reusables like menstrual cups, urging prospects to grasp “extra vigilance and points must be taken into consideration when choosing probably the most appropriate alternative primarily based totally on form of silicon, dyes used, and human rights factors.”
This textual content is part of Inexperienced Points’ 2024 Earth Day programming, It’s Giving… Earth Day: A sequence regarding the of us and organizations who’re “giving” Earth Day 24/7. We hope these tales encourage you to embody the spirit of Earth Day all yr spherical.
Latest It’s Giving… Earth Day Data and Updates
