is it possible to have a plastic free period

didn’t tell anyone when I started my period: I ordered a free sample pack of Tampax from Shout! magazine, hoping no-one in my family would notice when the mysterious package arrived in the post.

I’ve never thought about it as a conscious choice - it’s a utility, after all; bog-standard, like bog roll. But as the global plastic cutback takes hold, Celia Pool, co-founder of DAME is bringing the eco-battle to our bathrooms, having created the world’s first reusable tampon applicator.

“Regular tampons are made from synthetic substances,” Poole explains. “The cord is often glued rather than woven in, and there can even be plastic elements within the tampon itself. It’s not deemed a medical product, so what’s put into it doesn’t have to be released - but it can be a mixture of rayon, wood pulp, cotton and synthetic substances. 

“It’s a highly absorbent part of your body that you’re putting this item into every month: you think about what you put in your mouth, why aren’t you thinking about what you're putting into your vagina? We use organic cotton tampons, not only because they’re better for the body, but also for the environment when they go back into the ground.”

And of course, that’s not even to mention the single-use plastic applicators I’ve been tossing into the bin for the last 13 years. But like many women, I never felt I had another option: moon cups sound frightening, and I’m sure reusable pads are fantastic - I've just never got round to actually using them.

 “Big pharmaceutical companies were on to a good thing, making a product which women were heavily reliant on. They didn’t need to innovate that much,” Poole says, adding that “it’s the most genius subscription product, because women will always come back for more each month.”

I’m not alone in my preference for tampons with applicators: 60 per cent of women prefer to use them. It is estimated over 100 billion period products are disposed of every year, and nearly all contain plastics. None of these can be recycled as they’re deemed sanitary waste.

Given the phenomenal success of DAME's Kickstarter campaign to raise funds, which hit its £20,000 target in four days (nearly £39,000 has been pledged so far), the notion of a plastic-free period has never been more timely. Their D. reusable tampon applicator is made from medical grade mediprene with in-built antimicrobial technology that helps keep it hygienic, and works with any level of tampon absorbency. The design is deliberately sleek: DAME firmly believes that women have nothing to hide.

“Creating a product that looks good in bathrooms and handbags is a further measure to normalise periods,” says Poole's co-founder Alec Mills. "For too long women have been sold on the promise of discretion: that their periods are embarrassing and dirty. Not only does this profoundly affect the way women and girls view their bodies, it’s led to little meaningful innovation in the tampon industry in years”.

So, how exactly do you use it? Poole assures me that it has been designed to have minimal impact on existing habits - but that the return for the environment is significant.  “Each time a woman switches to using this new product, she’ll prevent approximately 12,000 pieces of single-use plastic from entering our oceans. The D. works exactly like a normal applicator,” she explains.

“The only difference is that you don’t throw it away. You load it up with a non-applicator tampon, insert it, and when you withdraw it, rather than chucking it in the bin or throwing it down the loo like a large swathe of the population, you just wipe it with a piece of loo roll. Rinse it under the tap if you can, and keep it in the travel pouch until you need to use it next. In between periods, sterilise it for five minutes.

“We were worried that for some women, rinsing their applicator outside the cubicle in a public loo could be an issue, but we’ve had people that say going out there and rinsing it in public, they almost want someone to make a comment on it, there was this strange feeling of pride which they hadn’t expected."

“We hope this will be the first of a whole range of products to make the bathroom green: we want to do it in a way that minimises the impact on a woman’s life and maximises the stylishness and the design that they expect from other items in their life. There needs to be headway with nappies and so on - wipes are a big scourge on the planet and need to be massively rethought. There’s a big shift that needs to happen. But the more products like this that come into the mainstream, the more people can accept other products coming in. People who use reusable coffee cups are more amenable to using reusable tampon applicators.”