Eco Period Box
In 2018 Ella Daish began campaigning to remove plastic from period products, which led her to take action on another issue: Period poverty. Ella created the Eco Period Box to help address this, Eco Period Boxes were placed in stores to enable customers to make a donation.
We are delighted to be working with Ella to take the Eco Period Box online!
Video Transcript
The Eco Period Box was active online from 11th March to 21st April 2020 and runs until Midnight Tuesday 21st April. There were two ways to make a donation - either add one of the products below to your basket as you would any other product, or choose to add one of four items as a checkout donation when you are completing your order.
For every ten of each item donated, Ethical Superstore donated a further two! The items are donated to Changing Lives which is a nationwide charity helping people facing challenging times to make positive change - for good.
By the end of the campaign our customers donated an amazing £12,190 worth of eco period products! With our additional donation added this equates to £14,628 worth of eco period products to be donated to Changing Lives!
Thanks to your generosity 265 ImseVimse Reusable Sanitary Pads (pack of 3), 204 Mooncup Menstrural Cups, 1,088 Natracare Applicator Tampons (pack of 16) and 1,822 Natracare Ultra Extra Winged Pads (pack of 10) will be donated directly to Changing Lives!
Who the donation goes to
We will be donating all of the items to Changing Lives which helps people facing challenging times make a change and has around 100 projects in England with 500 dedicated staff. Changing Lives helps people experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, addiction, long-term unemployment and more, to make positive change – for good.
Why are we doing this?
Period poverty is an often overlooked problem but is widespread in the UK. Plan International found that one in 10 women aged 14 to 21 have been unable to afford period products while 49% have missed an entire day of school because of their period. Period poverty affects thousands of individuals each year including those at school, those that are homeless, refugees and those who simply cannot afford them due to financial constraints.Who is Ella Daish?
Ella Daish started her campaign to eliminate plastic from all period products in 2018. She has gained much recognition, with Ella being named on the Independent’s Happy List 2019, BBC 100 Women 2019, The Big Issue’s Top 100 Changemakers of 2020 and the campaign has won the Surfers Against Sewage Plastic Free Award for Best Campaign 2019. You can read more about Ella on our blog .
Ella's petition has already reached over 200,000 signatures so be sure to add your name:
Since starting the campaign she became very aware of how many problems there are surrounding menstruation. These issues ranged from the taboo in talking about periods, the environmental impacts of plastic in period products and period poverty. Ella created the Eco Period Box to highlight the issue of Period Poverty and wanted it to be focused on eco products as everyone, no matter their situation, deserves a choice in what they use. The Eco Period Box was only available in physical stores - Ella was keen to make it available to everyone across the UK, and teamed up with us to take it online.
Video Transcript:
Ella - Hi I’m Ella I’m an environmental activist and my campaign calls on manufactures and supermarkets to remove plastic from their period products. When I went into supermarkets I was faced with either plastic for plastic so I went online to search for eco period products and that’s how I stumbled across the Ethical Superstore.
I started the Eco Period Poverty Box because people in poverty have no choice about what they use and that isn’t fair. I also started it to address poverty in a way that is beneficial to the people that are using them and the planet.
Abi – Here at Ethical Superstore we love the idea of Ella’s Eco Period Box and we wanted to bring it online so that everyone across the UK could get involved. When shopping with us you will have an option in the checkout to donate and for every ten items donated we will add two more. The items will be donated to the charity Changing Lives.
Joe – Changing Lives is a national charity, it’s based in the North East but we’ve got projects in the North West, the Midlands and Yorkshire. We aim to tackle social disadvantage of all kinds with individual focus support we can help transform people’s lives for the better. Women and children who use our services all over the country will benefit from it, many of them can’t afford period products. For example we have a period poverty donation station in Nottingham which helps to get secondary school girls these items who can’t afford period products.
Ella – I’m super excited to be launching an online version of the Eco Period Box. Let’s end period poverty together.