Utilising Clothing Waste to Alleviate Period Poverty in South Africa

de Meillon, Zanné (2024) Utilising Clothing Waste to Alleviate Period Poverty in South Africa. In: P/References of Design. Cumulus conference proceedings series, 1 . Cumulus Association, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Budapest, pp. 1507-1522. ISBN 978-952-7549-02-5

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Abstract

Period poverty is a problem affecting schoolgirls in South Africa and often results in them missing school during menstrual cycles. Concomitantly, discarded clothing is contributing to a growing landfill crisis. To mitigate the effect of these problems, the 'Sustain Her' voluntary community-based project, an initiative by a South African non-profit organisation aimed to utilise discarded clothing to create reusable sanitary pads that could be gifted to schoolgirls. This paper aims to answer the research question: How can clothing waste be utilised to create reusable sanitary pads and empower communities? This aim is pursued by first contextualising the 'Sustain Her' project and secondly by contextualising the opportunities and challenges of the 'Sustain Her' project. The research methodology employed is qualitative autoethnography because the author facilitated and participated in the 'Sustain Her' voluntary community-based project, and the findings of the paper are based on the author's personal experience and observations recorded in personal reflective notes. The 'Sustain Her' project showed that it is possible to recycle discarded clothing to create reusable sanitary pads for schoolgirls, to mitigate period poverty. To that end, community volunteers appeared eager to be involved in the 'Sustain Her' project, and seemed empowered to sort clothing, and perform basic cutting and hand sewing operations. The volunteers' machine sewing skills varied which made achieving a consistent quality of sanitary pad challenging. Several volunteers appeared eager to develop their machine sewing skills but due to various challenges, training was not possible.

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