Know where the pads are buried

“There is no paddy here, only pads. If you dig up the Andamans you will find just pads!” Sima jokes, leaving the other four women in splits.

In almost every home in Wandoor village of this union territory, there is a corner of the land that does not need an “X” to mark the (red) spot. Every woman in the household can find it without a map; the spot where they bury the used sanitary napkins. The Mondal girls are shy and reluctant to show me the place where they bury their waste, though.

“We gather the pads for a month,” Sima continues, “and then we dig a hole in the soil and bury them. Everyone buries their waste around their house. We have a place close to home, but right now it's all slushy so we collect them in a corner of the house and then we bury those. Sometimes we put them in the same hole, sometimes we dig new ones,” she says.

The five women sitting outside a pucca house in this village in the western part of the South Andaman district are engaged in a conversation about menstruation and practices of waste disposal. “Why would anyone want to discuss it? We never talked about these things.” 72-year-old matriarch of the Mondal family, Urmila, interrupts our conversation. Her family is one of Bengali settlers – several of whom from different communities have come to this union territory over generations.

“We weren’t really told about our periods by anyone,” she says. “They used to call it masik [monthly] in Bangla. When it happened, we found out. I did from my older sister. We wouldn’t go to school or leave the house to visit the temple during that time, and in the house, we didn’t enter the kitchen. Those were the rules. I never broke any of them, so I don't know what happens if you do,” she says.

The women gathered outside the Mondal house belong to three different generations. There is the septuagenarian Urmila, her daughter-in-law Sima Mondal, 41, Sima’s daughters, Bani, 17 and Shika, 21, as well as their relative Shivani Mondal, 33. Each one of them has their own ways of navigating tradition in a society that still holds on to old taboos.

"We learned about periods from school,” says Bani. “We were taught about sanitary napkins and how it is better to use those instead of cloth, as they will not give infections." A paramedical student in Port Blair (now renamed as Sri Vijaya Puram), she is among the 75 per cent of women in Wandoor who have now shifted to using pads regularly.

The latest National Family and Health Survey 5 (NFHS 2019-21) reflects the changing scene around menstrual health and estimates that about 64 per cent of all adolescent girls in the country now use sanitary napkins. That is, an almost 22 per cent increase over the last five years. It also states that 49 per cent of all women still use cloth.

“We always used suti kapada [cotton cloth pieces],” says Bani’s mother, Sima. “Now we have pads, but they cost Rs. 35-40 for a pack of 6. I use it only if I go out of the house or travel, otherwise I use a cloth. I wash it with soap and dry it.”

“We didn’t ever throw used cloth pieces just anywhere because we feared a snake might come. They are attracted to the smell of blood,” Urmila adds.

“I don't recommend cloth pads because women don't wash them properly,” says Sangita. She is among the many on the island trying to educate young girls about menstrual hygiene. “But most importantly, women don't dry them properly. They don't dry their innerwear out in the open, what do you think they will do with cloth pads?”

An ASHA worker in the village, Sukhalata Pahan, believes that it is shame and embarrassment attached with menstruation that keeps women from practicing hygienic methods in dealing with their waste as well. "Here in Wandoor, women hide the cloth pieces they use, so they don't dry properly, which is very bad. I have met many women in the village who clean the pads and then wrap them in a paper and bury them because they feel there is no other choice.”

The awareness around menstrual hygiene among the young population on the island means an increase in the use of disposable sanitary pads. Dakshin Foundation, a non-profit organisation involved working to improve the community participation in coastal governance, estimates that about 75% of the women in Wandoor now use sanitary pads. And the average number of sanitary pads used comes to 3,750 each month.

"In places like Dollygunj they collect pads but in Wandoor there is no place for this waste,” says Sangita Baul (name changed), an Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife (ANM) at Wandoor since 2011. “Sometimes they dump the waste near the water, but that causes other problems for the environment. People either dump the pads or burn them and this leads to soil and air pollution. A few women burn them at home. As an ANM, I tell them to store them all in one place and then bury them – In a pit after washing,” she says.

The situation on the island is not so unique, but there is limited land. As many as 36 per cent of women or girls in mainland India, that is 336 million menstruating women, are forced to develop their own strategies for disposing of period products - about 377 tons daily - with harmful consequences.

Madhuri Mondal, senior programme officer at Dakshin Foundation and an islander herself is working to get the women in the community involved in a conversation about the otherwise taboo topic of menstruation, as a first step to introduce them to sustainable alternatives to sanitary pads. The task is tough she says and “in Wandoor a lot of trash still ends up on the beach and when it rains it goes to the ocean.”

According to the Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM), 2016, used sanitary napkins, diapers, condoms, tampons, incontinence sheets and any other similar waste are classified as sanitary waste, and should be disposed of properly with dry waste. But without proper access to sanitary waste disposal mechanisms, “products are thrown into nearby fields and unused wells; flushed down toilets; buried; or burned in people’s backyards,” says a Lancet report.

The burying process, however, works only in case of home-made sanitary napkins, or those made from natural tissues, paper or cloth. The commercial sanitary napkins with non-biodegradable plastic liners that most of the women here use need low-cost incinerators.“ It was kapada ka zamana for us, the generation of cloth,” says Rai Bala Mondal, 57, who lives in the house adjacent to Urmila’s. “I tried pads, but I used to get rashes, and the pads used to smell. Also, now there is so much tension about where to put the pads. Sometimes, dogs find the pads dumped in the garbage and grabbing those in their mouth, they run around the village. Then you have to pick up the waste by hand,” she adds.

"We keep trying to get women to segregate their waste and not throw pads – we try to ask people also, but they blame each other. We also feel embarrassed to keep telling people. It makes our work hard,” says Rita Basu, a sanitation worker at Wandoor.

The guidelines by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) advises users to wrap the sanitary waste using self-wrapping straps. Or else, to keep it in leak-proof pouches provided by the producer and dispose the same along with dry waste or keep the waste in a separate bin provided at the time of door-to-door collection by the local agency. But in Wandoor, sanitation workers do not pick up sanitary waste during door-to-door collection.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued the guidelines for Solid Waste Management (SWM) and Bio-medical waste management rules in 2016. That included the disposal of sanitary pads. Three years later, in 2019, the first SWM cluster facility began its construction with a fund of 63 lakhs from the Swachh Bharat Mission – Gramin fund. Along with the cluster, the panchayat implemented a door-to-door waste collection program which included at-home segregation policies.

“People have gotten better at segregating, but it's still a big challenge for us at the cluster unit because they don’t always do it, or they don’t do it well,” says Ashish Baroi, the sanitation supervisor of the Wandoor Waste Management Cluster. “Even if they accidentally throw some wet waste into the dry waste, all of it gets ruined. We are a very small team managing door-to-door collection, segregation, and beach clean-up.” Wandoor Gram Panchayat has 10 sanitation workers, collecting dry waste from 350 households and 76 commercial establishments.

“Recently, the panchayat has started asking for 50 rupees a month toward collection,” says Rai Mondal. “But if they’re charging us then they should collect pads also. Garbage is collected here only once a week and sometimes that too doesn't happen. And they don’t collect pads. Even if they did collect, they put them in a big sack and then it remains for a month and a half by the side of the road. Often, we get flies, bugs, keeda [insects and worms] in the pads,” she adds.

“We are not able to take pads or diapers because we don’t have an incinerator, but people still try to sneak it into their waste. It’s not right for our workers to have to deal with that,” says Ashish Baroi. In his estimate the gram panchayat has to deal with more than 120 pads a day. In 2023, the SWM cluster in Wandoor did acquire an incinerator following the CPCB guidelines for the disposal and treatment of sanitary waste.

The machine had the capacity to handle 80 to 100 pads every day (8 to 10 every cycle). But the sanitation workers say that it could only take 3 to 4 pads per cycle and breaks down within days of installation. As the incinerator is non-functional, the panchayat is not collecting sanitary pads and diapers from the households.

“Waste management has been a challenge because the machines are all in need of repair and with just 10 people working in the unit, labour is a challenge. We face delays from other government departments as well, but we are trying to do what we can,” says the gram panchayat pradhan Adhir Das. Much of the waste collected in the South Andaman district at present goes via ship back to the mainland, mostly to Chennai. As for the pads, in the absence of incinerators women largely continue to bury them in their backyard.