Eco friendly sanitary pad disposal

Number of Students : 1
Guides : Umanand L
Sponsor : Arcapsis Techno Solutions Pvt Ltd (Nitin Awasthi)

A compact home device that can decompose (smokeless) and dispose utilized sanitary pads.
Idea: Over the past few years, the Menstrual Hygiene Alliance of India (MHAI) has approximated that there are 336 million menstruating women in India, of which 36 per cent use disposable sanitary napkins — those totals to 121 million women.
The number of sanitary napkins used per menstrual cycle — at a conservative eight — plus that for the year, implies that India has 12.3 billion disposable sanitary napkins to take care of every year, majority of which are not biodegradable/compostable.
Implementing solid waste interventions to effectively segregate and identify menstrual waste during routine garbage collection, the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2016 underscores the challenge.
According to the SWM Rules 2016, soiled napkins, diapers, condoms, tampons and blood-soaked cotton are considered household waste and are being disposed after segregation into biodegradable and non-biodegradable components.
SWM Rules acknowledge that according to the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules 2016, items contaminated with blood and body fluids, including cotton, dressings, soiled plaster casts, lines and bedding, are bio-medical waste and should be incinerated, autoclaved or microwaved to destroy pathogens.
One sanitary pad could take 500 to 800 years to decompose as the plastic used is non-biodegradable and can lead to health and environmental hazards; each pad is an equivalent to four plastic bags. Data on menstrual waste management from the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) shows that 28 per cent of such pads are thrown with routine waste, 28 per cent are thrown in open, 33 per cent are disposed via burial and 15 per cent are burnt openly.
Solution: We need to make a cost-effective sanitary pad disposal equipment with UV light exposure for the same to kill all the pathogens.