Six months ago, Selin Celikoyar bought her last tampon before making the switch to a "game-changing" reusable menstrual disc on the recommendation of a friend.
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Flexible discs and other reusable menstrual products are gaining traction as alternatives to the billions of single-use pads and tampons that get tossed into landfills every year.
"The experience has been such a game changer," she said.
She had long been wary of tampons "from an environmental perspective and also from a biological perspective".
"I felt that they were very wasteful and expensive to consistently keep buying," she said.
Products such as the discs, silicone cups and period underwear can be reused for years, so they're cost-effective and long-lasting in addition to helping people reduce waste.
The popularity of the reusable alternatives has grown since the pandemic, when it was easier to experiment with period products in the privacy of a home bathroom, according to women's health experts.
About 12 billion disposable pads and seven billion tampons go into US landfills every year, according to Dr Luwam Semere, chief of obstetrics and gynaecology at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara.
Pads are mostly plastic. Once they're in the landfill, they take up to 800 years to degrade, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Single-use pads and tampons are by far the most popular period products.
Women's health expert Dr Navya Mysore said that's not because they're better, they're just usually the first options kids are shown.
"It was often like, 'What did your mum use? What did your grandma use?' And that's how you were introduced into period hygiene," said Mysore, a primary care physician based in New York City.
The most popular alternative is the menstrual cup, which gets inserted much like a tampon.
The discs get inserted further in, so they don't interrupt intercourse.
Both can hold several times more than a tampon and can stay inserted for up to 12 hours, instead of the four to eight hours recommended for tampons.
Semere also said the risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome, commonly associated with tampons, is much lower with menstrual cups and discs.
The cons? The products require some technique to put them in right, and doing it wrong can get messy.
The cups and discs also have to be cleaned regularly with soap and water.
"It's hard to do that if you're at work and you're in a shared, public (bathroom). It's not the most convenient," said Mysore.
Cups prevent leakage by creating a suction, so people who use devices inside the uterus for contraception risk dislodging them if they pull out a menstrual cup without breaking the seal.
The placement of discs, which don't use suction, can also take some getting used to.
"It's high up there, you don't feel it, but it can be sometimes harder for women to pull them out," said Dr Annemieke van Eijk, an epidemiologist with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
But for Celikoyar, the advantages of the discs outweighed the drawbacks.
She said that a longer changing window has gotten her through a back-to-back concert and red-eye flight without any concern.
"There's an ease of use there for the modern woman that is significantly better than traditional methods," she said.
Menstrual cups and discs typically cost between $US15 ($A23) and $US40 ($A61) and come in different shapes and sizes.
"Ideally, you would like to experiment a bit with what type of cup works best for you," van Eijk said.
A reusable product can help save money over the long term.
Celikoyar estimates that she was using three tampons every day for seven days, or about 20 per month. Someone who switched to a reusable product would likely break even after a few months.
For people who prefer pads, the most common reusable option is period underwear, which is comparable to regular-looking underwear with an extra absorbent lining.
"Those are nice because we do see people getting irritation from pad use because of the different materials that are in the disposable pads," Semere said.
The downside, just like with pads, is the inability to tell when it's absorbed all that it can.
Mysore said that's why some of her patients use the underwear as a backup, and pair them with cups, discs or tampons.
"You can sort of mix and match different period products, depending on how heavy your flow is and what your period is like for you," she said.
Australian Associated Press