When it comes to throwing away used period products most of us are familiar with how to throw away a used pad or pantyliner. However, properly disposing of used tampons can be a bit trickier, especially if you’re new to using tampons. Luckily though, there’s not much difference in the way tampons are disposed of compared to pads. In this blog post we look at the different ways to throw away used tampons, as well as how to compost Sheba’s 100% organic cotton tampons.

How to dispose of used tampons:

1) The most common and easiest way to dispose of a used tampon is by wrapping it securely in toilet paper and throwing it in the nearest bin. Tampons aren’t meant to be flushed down the toilet, even if they’re made of organic cotton. If you’re in a public bathroom you can put the wrapped tampon in the cubicle’s bin if it has one.

2) You can take it another step further, and seal the tampon in a self-sealing disposable bag. This is great for when you’re on-the-go and need to use a public bathroom to change tampons. It’s also great in case there’s very little toilet paper and you need somewhere to store the used tampon before finding a bin.

How to compost Sheba’s organic cotton tampons:

You can either make a compost heap yourself, or you can buy a compost bin here. It’s important that the compost heap or bin is well-drained and gets sunlight so that it doesn’t become too damp. Once your compost heap is sorted, you can just throw in the used tampons (there’s no need to wrap them in toilet paper or put them in a disposable bag).

Make sure to continuously add natural materials that can easily breakdown in the compost like vegetables, plants etc as they breakdown quickly. To get a good mix of materials; adding things like cotton, paper or cardboard to the compost will make sure things are breaking down at different times and not all at once. It can take up to 18 months for used period products to fully compost, which is a lot less time than 500 years when it comes to plastic-based period products!