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How Tsuno Fights Against Plastic Pollution

How Tsuno Fights Against Plastic Pollution

Life in single use plastic, it's not fantastic. 
Being environmentally conscious underpins every decision we make, from the sustainability and biodegradability of the materials used in our bamboo pads, organic cotton tampons and wrappers to the way we decide to package your orders every morning.
This means that every time you purchase one of our pads or tampons, you're also making the choice to support a business that is committed to the future of our environment. 
In light of Plastic Free July, a global movement that encourages millions of people to be part of the solution to plastic pollution, we thought we'd share a few of the things we do here at Tsuno to reduce our plastic waste. 
Packing orders
At Tsuno we use paper tape to package all our online orders instead of plastic tape.
The only time we use plastic tape is when we reuse tampon boxes for smaller
orders and leave the left over tape if it's in good condition. 
These tampon boxes come from our manufacturers and all our tampons come packaged in them in packs of 12. Instead of putting them aside or chucking them in the bin, we repurpose the boxes for your orders. 
This is the existing tape on all our tampon boxes, we don't remove it and instead reuse it!
After we pack your orders in our reused tampon boxes, we seal the top with our paper tape!
We've noticed it's common practice to strap multiple boxes together with plastic. Instead of using the single use plastic strapping we tape bigger orders that require multiple boxes together with our paper tape.
Our Pads
Our pads have gone through a few evolutions as we aspire to create a more sustainable and environmentally friendly product with each new bulk order. 
At the beginning our Tsuno pads used to come with a plastic tab (as shown on the left) for easy access. However, we realised that this tab is unnecessary and a byproduct of the sanitary industry which heavily incorporates plastics in every facet of its design. Instead, we have now opted for no tab as shown on the right, which is the more eco-friendly decision as our pads are wrapped in a corn starch based PLA biodegradable film.
One of our proudest moments in the evolution of our Tsuno pad is when we replaced the polyethylene bottom layer of our pads to the more sustainable corn starch based PLA and PBAT material. 
However, making such changes is not easy. The sanitary industry is a massive producer of single-use plastics, so we are constantly in a process of working closely with our manufacturers and experimenting to ensure our products can be an environmentally friendly alternative to what is currently on the market. 
Our Tampons
Due to government regulations, tampons must be individually wrapped in a polypropylene film to protect them from bacteria and moisture. You may have noticed our tampon wrappers are a little more fiddly to open compared to the twist wrappers offered by some other brands. This is as a result of the material making up the tampon. When investigating organic tampon manufacturing, we were surprised to learn that many organic brands actually also have a plastic mesh imbedded into the surface of the tampon. We were faced with this option, or not, and chose not to use it because of our mission to provide sustainably better disposable sanitary options for our customers. The twist action of the other wrappers would not be suitable for a purely 100% organic cotton tampon because the cotton fibres would be ripped, compromising the effectiveness of the tampon.  
 
We are always open to any suggestions you might have! 
We believe in trying to reduce the use of plastic as much as possible, and we believe that our organic cotton tampons and bamboo pads are as plastic free as possible - but we are constantly trying to improve. 
Naturally it's a work in progress and an issue best fought together!
Main photo by Karina Tess on Unsplash
 
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