It’s International Women’s Day on Sunday (8th March) and over at Things To Do Today today, I’ve linked to a number of posts about green sanitary protection alternatives.

We’ve featured what do to with unused but unwanted sanitary towels and tampons on here before and there were lots of good suggestions including keeping towels around to use as bandages in emergencies and making tampons into art/a Thanksgiving centrepiece ;)

But what can be done with expired menstrual cups?

Manufacturers such as Diva Cup and Mooncup recommend they’re replaced every year because of government advice on silicone and because of the “personal, hygienic nature” of the product. I know some people keep using them anyway if the silicone is still in good condition because it seems such as waste to just fling them out – but I wonder if there are any ways to reuse it for other purposes instead.

And what about recycling? Silicone is recyclable, just not particularly widely – are there are programmes to recycle these cups in particular?

(Photo by Jip 26)