Disposable menstrual hygiene products, such as pads and tampons, allow women and girls to manage their hygiene safely, discretely, and with comfort and confidence, enabling their full participation in daily life. While this disposability offers convenience and accessibility, it also creates sustainability challenges due to increased material consumption and waste. Unfortunately, few alternatives currently match this convenience and accessibility while offering improved sustainability.

For this challenge, we are looking to improve the sustainability of menstrual hygiene product disposal. This involves both preventing their escape into the environment and enabling material recovery where appropriate. Our goal is to make disposal an easy, repeatable, and rewarding experience for users, recognizing the unique considerations of this waste.

Disposing of menstrual products often involves heightened concerns about privacy, discretion, and sensitivity to cultural norms and societal beliefs and taboos. Additionally, the stigmatization of menstruation means solutions must actively work to reduce this stigma by being inclusive, respectful, and supportive of all users.

Today, disposal of menstrual products varies widely, including throwing them in the trash, burying, burning, flushing, or disposal in pit latrines. We are now asking for ideas to help change these long-standing behaviors and create new, sustainable disposal practices.

We need your creative ideas to design a disposal system or process for feminine hygiene products that innovates around the real-world practicalities of:

• Handling and storing quantities of used menstrual products in the home, with attention to privacy, odor control, and discretion.

• Hand-over or transfer of menstrual products for treatment, using either a pick-up or drop-off model that is sensitive to discretion, community attitudes, and the need to avoid reinforcing stigma.

• Motivating and maintaining participation in this new behavior change, while reinforcing respect for cultural and societal beliefs about menstruation and menstrual waste, and actively promoting inclusivity and dignity for all users.