In this episode I’m chatting to Celia Pool one of the co-founders of DAME – a sustainable self-care brand on a mission to turn our bathrooms green.

Did you know that globally we throw away 100 billion sanitary products every year? Which is enough to circle the globe 250 times.

Plastic tampon applicators are a big part of the problem –being used for just seconds but taking hundreds of years to degrade. Even cardboard applicators are often lined with plastic. Here in the UK we throw away 13 billion aplicators every single year, and in a recent UK beach clean nine tampon applicators were found washed up on beaches for every kilometre of  shoreline.

There are loads of great reusable menstrual products out there like cups and washable pads but what Celia and Alex realised was that one of the reasons that more women weren’t making the switch to reusables was that it was too big a habit change to switch away from a product like tampons that worked for them.
Hence their first product is the world’s first reusable tampon applicator along with organic cotton tampons

It’s a brilliant story and DAME are a company who really are pulling out all the stops to do things right – from actively seeking out female engineers ands specialists to help develop their produts, through to designing a poduct that can be used with any size tampon and any brand, and re-using existing packaging to send out their products. In fact, on the website they describe themselves as a “consumer goods company that belives in less consumption” (and we dive into that oxymoron in the podcast!).

 Whether you’re already a dedicated cup or reusable pads type, or in fact you don’t have periods at all, this episode still has something for you – it’s a brilliant example of a brand on a mission and it’s hugely inspiring to see how creating and selling stuff can be good for people and planet when it’s done right.

Enjoy!