LIVE: COP26 - Ladies Without Plastic - Africa Educates Her Campaign with Sofonie Dala, Angola

 Women Without Plastic - Swap single use menstrual pads for reusable alternative

Leveraging girls’ and women’s education is a powerful part of the solution to  climate change

BOOM! That's the sound of our new campaign Women without Plastic as key to reduce Climate Change.

Even though girls are significantly impacted by climate change, they are also powerful agents of change, capable of strengthening a country’s response to climate change.

Ladies Without Plastic - Key to reduce our Carbon Footprints

This movement helps to end period poverty in Angola by empowering women and girls in making reusable pads. Disposable pads contains plastic, artificial fragrance and chemical gel. When disposed it takes hundreds and thousands of years to break down in the landfills!

Moreover, the manufacturing of disposable menstrual hygiene products (an almost $6 billion industry) generates a total carbon footprint of about 15 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. That’s the equivalent of burning about 35 million barrels of oil. On average a woman has her period from 3 to 7 days menstruating approximately 468 periods over 38years between ages 13 – 51 years. This implies 2,280 days with her period and uses an average of 11,000 sanitary pads in her life time.

Climate change affects women

We advocate for behavioural change to reduce earth vulnerability to climate change and global warning from disposable sanitary pads. Work on women liberation against harmful restrictions surrounding  menstruation. 

We mobilise women to switch back to the use of reusable sanitary pads and napkins than disposable sanitary pads that have local ecosystem vulnerable to climate change and global warming. 

With an estimated 200 million adolescent girls living on the frontlines of the climate crises, the link between girls´ education and climate change deserves urgent attention. In our cloud platform we explore the powerful role that education can play in tackling climate change.

133 years ago, the disposable menstrual pads grew from a Benjamin Franklin invention created to help stop wounded soldiers from bleeding. However, these cultural norms did not stop technological innovation: the first disposable pads hit the market in 1896. Today, menstrual products are a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry, with prime-time ads and countless products on the market.

COP26: why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change

Last week the Glasgow climate change conference also dedicated to recognising gender equality, and the empowerment of women and girls in climate policy and action.

Education for girls can be a pathway for fighting the climate crisis in three key ways:

1. education in both the sciences and social sciences is necessary to address climate change. Girls’ participation in these fields will drive innovation in green technologies as well as a social approach to resilience built on equality

2. formal education can build on women and girls’ existing community-based knowledge regarding disaster risk reduction and help them respond to climate emergencies

3. education creates pathways to more independent decision-making for women and girls around work, family planning and community engagement. It also creates opportunities for leadership and participation in formal decision-making.