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The Future Of Femcare Products Is Here With Planera’s Certified Flushable And Biodegradable Sanitary Pads

This article is more than 3 years old.

Living sustainably is difficult and confusing. Being a conscious consumer comes with a variety of challenges - from trying to reduce household energy use, to consider the item’s life expectancy and recycling, but one thins is sure - sustainable living philosophy has become part of our life this way or another with one single goal - to help us build a cleaner future for our environment.

Olivia Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Planera - a personal hygiene brand on a mission to prove that we don't need to compromise in order to achieve sustainability in our everyday lives. The company's first product is a flushable and biodegradable sanitary pad, a product that over half the world needs, "and deserves to have a high-performing, convenient, and sustainable solution", as Ahn explains.

For Olivia and her team, the journey started three years ago at Imperial College London’s entrepreneurship competition and grew initially through competitions and grants, before raising their pre-seed round in September last year. Designing, prototyping and finally manufacturing pads that can be safely flushable and processed like toilet paper in municipal waste plants isn't such an easy and simple idea like some might think. Let's not forget that the product needs to be high performing, too, because, at the end of the day, it will mostly be used by menstruators.

"It has taken over three years of research and development, working with a global network of suppliers and partners to develop sustainable material technology that could outperform single-use plastics by feeling softer and drier for longer. Our pads have been tested for up to 24 hours and absorb 8 ml. On an average period, 20-35ml is lost over five days, so we are confident our pads will provide protection for a medium-heavy flow," Ahn tells me.

All sanitary pads use an artificial substance called adhesive in between their layers to create a pad. This material prevents fast biodegradation of the pad, and it's making flushability impossible. Planera has developed a new manufacturing process that allows for flushability and biodegradability of the pad, by removing all additives during manufacturing, therefore greatly reducing the environmental imprint in the creation of the pads. This innovation has been successfully and independently tested in accordance with WIS 4-02-06 - the water industry specification for flushability testing. Until now, only wet wipes have been tested and certified - making Planera’s pads the first certified flushable in the world and the first product in the global market to undergo testing and certification by a regulatory body for flushability. 

Conventional disposable menstrual products made from 90% plastic – along with their packaging, generate 200,000 tonnes of waste per year. If each woman uses between 11,000‐16,000 tampons and pads in their lifetime, that’s about 32 items per period. This works out to approximately 200kg of tampons, pads, and applicators thrown away in a lifetime of menstruating for one woman (either going to landfill or down the toilet).

"When flushed, our pads will break down completely with sewage in water treatment plants, providing a zero-waste solution for sanitary waste. Even if binned, our pads will break down in contact with water, allowing for fast biodegradation in landfills".

But Planera's innovation can be applied to other hygiene industries such as infant-care, incontinence, and other household products, which makes it not only versatile but also very lucrative. According to Statista, revenue in the feminine hygiene segment amounts to $581 million in 2020 in the U.K. only.

So far, Ahn has raised over $300,000 equity-free in various competitions (London Mayor’s Entrepreneur 2018, Imperial College London’s WE Innovate winner 2018, Minority Supplier Diversity UK Innovation winner 2018) and grants which funded the product development. It has also attracted some notable venture capital and angel investors such as Ada Ventures and Vectr VC who led its pre-seed round ($600,000-plus) in September 2019.

"One trend I see across all sectors is sustainability. The world is on fire and we are in desperate need of solutions to cater to consumers whilst being climate neutral or positive. I see that with the rise of technology within the female health industry, we need to ensure that the data is used transparently and ethically. I hope that this will be a big step forward to understanding female health and closing the gap in health standards," Ahn concludes.

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