Between choice and sustainability: Navigating menstrual waste management in India through feminist political ecology and ecological modernization.

In India, with over 355 million menstruating individuals, challenges persist for women in achieving proper menstrual hygiene management (MHM), crucial for gender equality. Despite governmental and NGO efforts, MHM schemes distributing plastic products contribute to a significant waste problem, harming the environment. To mitigate this, menstrual waste incinerators in schools and sustainable menstrual products, such as the menstrual cup, have been posited as solutions to this growing issue. Both solutions can be classified as ecological modernization (EM) techniques to addressing this issue, which critical scholarship, such as Feminist Political Ecology (FPE), takes issue with. This project explores India's menstrual waste management, delving into incinerators and sustainable menstrual products' (SMPs) benefits and challenges, unravelling a complex situation, where both EM theory and FPE theory play a role in. The goal is to scrutinize how stakeholders can address menstrual waste without compromising women's right to choose products aligned with their bodies. To understand this situation, 54 in-person interviews with college students in Coimbatore unravel women's lived experiences with incinerators and SMPs. The findings reveal that women are aware of the environmental consequences of commercial sanitary napkins. SMPs and incinerators offer relief from the environmental guilt that women experience, and while these EM interventions might promote 'menstrual enclosure,' as some scholars have suggested, our research participants emphasize their liberatory potential rather than enclosure. Even though such EM solutions have several social and infrastructural problems that limit their availability and use, they serve as important means for women in India to reclaim agency over their bodies. • Women are aware of the environmental consequences of commercial sanitary napkins. • EM interventions ease environmental guilt; participants stress their liberatory potential. • Despite social and infrastructure issues, EM solutions help Indian women reclaim agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]