Yorkshire Water has announced a new partnership with Hey Girls, a social enterprise set up to eradicate period poverty.
It aims to provide 20,000 reusable, sustainable period packs to selected secondary schools across the region and follows a successful pilot partnership at Crawshaw Academy in Pudsey.
It’s part of a wider education programme to improve period dignity, educate young people about sustainable, reusable period products, and find an alternative method of disposal to flushing pads and tampons down the loo, which can cause blockages in the sewer network.
Yorkshire Water’s education team have devised a programme that includes sessions on period health and wellbeing.
The team will be delivering the education programme to a selected number of secondary schools from September.
As well as distributing period health starter kits, the period health education sessions will feature where to access products and explain the benefits of sustainable products that can be better for the environment, the pocket and the sewer network.
Rachel Lee, curriculum for life, safeguarding and PHSE governor at Crawshaw Academy, said: “We’re really grateful for Yorkshire Water for providing this opportunity for pupils at the academy as it is important to supply students with sustainable choices.
“It ensures that our Personal, Health and Social Education (PHSE) curriculum is relevant and reflective of current local and global issues. We highly recommend that other schools take up this opportunity.”
Nicola Shaw, chief executive office of Yorkshire Water said: “Our education team developed and delivered a pilot scheme last year and the feedback from teachers and pupils was really positive.
“We wanted to extend this pilot as part of our wider education programme as we were quite shocked by the number of important school days lost due to period dignity and anxiety.
“Our association with Hey Girls will help us to introduce pupils to alternative, plastic-free period products and encourage reusable, sustainable alternatives. This also reduces the number of period products being flushed away and potentially blocking the network.”
Hey Girls operates on a buy one, give one principle so that for each eco-friendly product purchased, a second is gifted by the social enterprise. Hey Girls have donated over 30 million period products to schools, youth groups, women’s centres, homeless shelters and food banks since its launch in 2018.
Yorkshire Water has purchased 10,000 period starter packs which include reusable two-night pads, reusable two-day pads, a single reusable pant-liner, and biodegradable travel bag. Hey Girls has matched this to create a total of 20,000 packs. The education roadshow roll-out will include a session about period health, care of products and an alternative to flushing for other single-use period products.
Kate Smith, Co-Founder and Director of Hey Girls, said: “We want to put an end to one in 10 people affected by period poverty in the UK and stop 49% of pupils missing an entire day at school because of their period.”
It is hoped that the Hey Girls partnership will raise awareness about the safe disposal of period products. Previous campaigns have successfully resulted in a reduction of blockages caused by ‘fat-burgs,’ the collective term for fats, oils and grease that congeal into a stubborn, immovable mass once cooled on a reduction on the number of blockages caused by wet wipes.
Sponsored content
What a forward-thinking initiative. Everyone wins. I hope more schools take this up.
There’s obviously a need for this initiative, and well done to all involved, but where are the parents in all this? I’d like to bet that many of them have their nice cars, phones, and TV packages, but an important part of good parenting has to take a back seat compared to all these other “essentials”.