Getting my Juju on!

Earlier this year I set a few goals for my sustainability journey. I have finally gotten around to number 2, trying a moon cup.

As part of my Plastic Free July activities I ordered my cup - this was a major step for me. It was one of those tasks that seemed like such a simple thing to do but it just wasn't happening.

My Juju parcel

I guess part of my hesitation was because it wasn't as simple as jumping on the computer and hitting buy. I had to decide what I wanted. I really knew nothing about moon cups and I don't think any of my friends use them.

My research included Sustainable Menstruation Australia and Environment House.

Both sites had really useful information to help me choose what I wanted. Unfortunately, the blog I read on Environment House's website at the time seems to have been taken down. A woman spoke about trying both the Juju and Lunette cups and preferred the Lunette I think. She found one of the styles just wasn't comfortable for her.

The main considerations when choosing a cup are:

• Are you a virgin? (not a big one for many of us, but clearly important for youngsters)
• If you are a mum, did you have a vaginal birth?
• Do you have a heavy or low flow period?
• Do you do any regular pelvic floor strengthening exercise like pilates or yoga?
• Your age - as you get older your pelvic muscles tend to weaken; and
• The length of your vaginal canal (probably not a huge factor for most people but if it is considerably long or short then you would need to buy accordingly).

There are two sizes available in each brand. The Juju is Australian made, which gave it a big tick in my book. It is also clear with no dyes, which I like because it means less chemicals. 

The Juju is a smaller sized brand. So the size 1 Juju is basically the smallest cup available. 

I have a low flow and practice yoga so was considering buying the size 1. Rosie from Sustainable Menstruation Australia advised that is would be wise to go for the size 2, which is bigger but still a small sized cup.

The sterilised cup

When my cup arrived I was expecting it to be bigger than it is for some reason (no idea why - clearly I know where it needs to be going!)

I boiled mine for 5 minutes to sterilise it before use - I plan to do that before each monthly cycle.

It is meant to take 2 to 3 months to properly get the hang of using my cup. I have been reading up on what to do and I'm feeling really excited about not having to buy tampons and pads every month. Not only to save the waste. I always seem to run of them out at awkward times! 

The cup is supposed to last 3 times as long as a pad or tampon would and it can last up to 12 hours. That would mean I could change it morning and night and forget about it in-between. That sounds like freedom to me.

I'm really looking forward to getting my Juju on!

Have you considered trying a menstrual cup before? 

Why Plastic Free July is Important

Our Living Smarties group watched Bag It last week. It was a great way to kick off Plastic Free July. It reminded me that there are very important environmental, health and social reasons to reduce our family's use of single-use plastic.

The environmental reason that struck a cord for me is that plastic is made from fossil fuels (oil and natural gas), which take hundreds of thousands of years to form in the earth. They are non-renewable and, after a fossil fuel is burned, can never be used again.

Many single-use plastic products are used for less than a couple of hours before they are discarded. It doesn't make any sense to buy a single-use plastic bottle of water, for example, when we live in a country where we can get clean drinking water straight from the tap! It is such a waste of precious fossil fuels. My re-usable bottle is so much nicer to drink out of too.

The health reason that struck a cord for me is that since the late 70's we have been surrounded by plastic. It touches our food, our drinks, our medicines and everything else. Let's be honest. We are offered plastic shopping bags to carry food that is often packed in at least one layer of packaging or plastic. Although the use of some plastic elements (think BPAs) are being phased out of products that touch food we don't really understand the potential impacts of the other components yet.

Since plastic doesn't break down in the environment for millions of years it fragments and is eaten by wildlife, particularly in the ocean. Apart from being terrible pollution the plastic is then passed up the food chain to humans. How can we begin to understand the flow on health effects of that for not just humans, but all of the animals impacted within the food chain? Hormone mimicking effects (again, such as BPAs) are also realised through the food chain, particularly in the ocean.

Image Source

The social impacts motivating me arose directly from Bag It. The movie talked about plastic recycling and how numbers 1 & 2 (in the recycling triangle) are the most readily recycled products (as opposed to numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7). I know this is true because when I was working to increase plastic recycling at my work the only plastics that were collected (because they have a market) were numbers 1 & 2. Bag It explained that numbers 1 & 2 (which include PET plastic drink bottles) can easily be recycled into the lower grade of plastics (3-7). The lower grade of plastics, however, can't be recycled into a plastic of high enough quality to be economical. This means that plastic is generally only recycled once and then it becomes unusable waste.

When the higher quality plastics are collected and recycled they can be shipped to third world countries and processed in abominable working conditions. Workers sift through plastic waste and melt it down with no safety equipment. That is a pretty considerable social price for my plastic use.

On a more positive note I should mention what an amazing product plastic is. It can do so many things and it is so cheap to manufacture! In countries where there is no clean drinking water I'm sure many would suffer incredibly without it. It's like everything - let's try to use a great product responsibly so that we can continue to use it in a much nicer world for a much longer time.

Do you share my concerns about plastic?