About a decade ago, Hamsa Iyer, who works in the field of waste management, went to visit a landfill. She witnessed a waste picker take out a sanitary pad from the trash. That image stayed with her for a long time and she wondered if she had, in some way, contributed to that waste. “You can’t really compost a sanitary pad and there’s also plastic in it,” she says. During that time, Iyer began contemplating other alternatives. 

She bought cloth pads first but quickly found they took a while to dry in the Mumbai rains. She then bought a menstrual cup from an online store, but waited a while to try it out. “It was a bit intimidating in the beginning,” says Iyer. But after three months, she gave it a go. “It was an eye-opener for me. I did not have to worry about changing a pad. It was just convenient and I did not have to think about disposing of it,” says the 31-year-old.