Page 2522 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 31 July 2019
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products is that we do not know people who use them. We do not know they are going to work, so we are not going to spend money to buy the things in the first place. As both previous speakers have talked about, education is the most important part of this.
You have to realise that this is going to work and over the long run it is going to be easy-peasy. That is one of the reasons I included early childhood educators in my amendment. We need people to see that it works and that their peers are doing it. I have been told about a number of childcare centres where the nappy service is part of it: the baby goes to the centre with one of their own nappies, comes home with one of their own nappies and the childcare centre deals with the cloth nappies in between. This shows people how it works and that it is quite reasonable.
Another place where it would make sense to do these sorts of things is at the AMC so the women who are there for any period of time have a chance to see this is a change. It could save money for the prison authorities as well because there must be some washing facilities there. I know very little about it—
Mrs Jones: They do not do their own washing.
MS LE COUTEUR: Fair enough, but someone must wash. I do not know anything about the mechanics of how that would happen in that environment, but it seems like a place where we could do something.
As to sanitary items, an average woman has 400 menstrual cycles in a lifetime, and that represents an awful lot of tampons and sanitary pads. I remember from the past that some of those washable pads were not that wonderful, but they have improved. For anyone who is interested, on my desk is some unused and unopened continence and menstrual underwear. Due to the age at which I became aware of these products they have not become part of my life—too old for one and not old enough for the other—but I understand that they work. While they are expensive to start with, over the long run they save money.
Every year or so we see the share the dignity campaign, which is about sharing this sort of stuff with people who find it difficult to afford it. It would be great if menstrual cups and cloth sanitary pads were part of this because the women who benefit from this campaign are women for whom the up-front cost could be a barrier to their use.
I think this is a great motion. Ms Orr’s motion this morning was in the category of the great waste motions and this motion is also. We have to be aware that waste is not a single thing. If it were a single thing we would undoubtedly work out how to deal with it. But there are lots and lots of different wastes and we need to deal with them individually and in the most appropriate way. One of the most important ways of doing that is to change the products and technology we use to things with less environmental impact, and we can do that in this instance.
I am very pleased about this, and I am very pleased that this will be discussed again because Ms Cheyne’s motion has a report-back date. I am really looking forward to hearing about positive progress, and I hope that there will be a greater uptake of cloth nappies, menstrual pads, menstrual cups and period and incontinence underwear.
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