Yvon Chouinard’s recent decision to essentially gift his $3 Billion company’s shares to fight climate change is a seismic move that flies in the face of traditional capitalist business values. At a time in the world where wealth disparity has never been more radical and grossly unfair, Chouinard’s generosity is glaring and unparalleled. 

As longtime leaders in the sustainable menstrual health movement, we’ve been advocates for the transparent disclosure of ingredients in menstrual products. Until very recently, little material action has been taken on the issue in North America, thanks to ‘grandfathered’ regulatory clauses that allow manufacturers to keep ‘proprietary’ ingredient information to themselves. 

The growth of the reusable menstrual care industry is seeing a classic business trend common in the apparel industry: new entrants making low-quality goods, looking to jump on the bandwagon of a hot product category to attract customers and cash in.

On the face of it, lower-cost products seem like a good thing, but we need to ask what the true impact of this is: who actually loses in this situation?

Menstrual products are essential personal hygiene supplies, alongside toilet paper, hand soap and paper towels. Provision of these essential supplies are unquestionably the re sponsibility of the institutions where the bathrooms are located. 

Our question is: If free disposable pads and tampons are now being funded for students, employees and others, why not reusables too? 

At Aisle, our dedication to quality, sustainability and product safety border on being obsessive. In fact, the company was originally founded to create products that were free of allergens, bleaches and other irritants. The explosive popularity of reusable menstrual products in recent years has led to concern around the presence of PFAS in period underwear. Let’s take a closer look.

Planet-Positive Periods is the outcome of a new and powerful creative partnership between Aisle, Green Periods and PERIOD. We are thrilled with this new suite of up-to-the-minute research and resources about sustainability and menstruation, all in a free, open-source format available to anyone.

Sustainability and transparency are two important value pillars for Aisle. While many of our efforts are ongoing (such as our commitment to being a top ranked B Corp, and conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of our products’ environmental impacts) we also do an annual Impact Report, which includes our social impact and menstrual equity projects.

Living in an era of climate emergency, we all want to do what we can to make a difference. However, as consumers it can be challenging to identify greenwashing (false implied claims about sustainability) or which choices are more truly green than others. 

Aisle has never been a traditional business. Since 1993, when we created the first groundbreaking collection of professionally made cloth menstrual pads and period underwear, Aisle has put people and impact first.

We’re counting down the days to the restock of our period underwear, in particular our fan favourite Boxer Brief. 🎉  We thought we’d take a moment to list some of the top reasons our boxers are so well-loved, and what they’re particularly great for.

It’s time for all initiatives of all sizes to prioritize tackling social and environmental issues as their primary raison d’être.

In the United States, approximately 12 billion disposable pads are thrown away each year. In Canada, disposable pad sales increased to $258.21 million CAD in 2020. Globally, disposable pads have a market value of $23.9 million USD, projected to rise to $28 million by 2024.