The below email was sent to Tampax on the 15/01/19 via the contact us page on their website here.
I was given the query number 08066171 and told it would take 2-3 working days to get a response.
Please feel free to copy and use this letter and send it to the above address. They also have a customer care line.
Dear Tampax,
Thank you so much for making one of the world’s top-selling brands of tampons. Women all over the world are liberated by your intimate feminine hygiene products and are free to rollerblade wherever they want.
But three of your four best-selling products, Tampax Pearl, Tampax Compak and Tampax Pearl Compak, come with a plastic applicator and plastic wrapping. These disposable single-use plastics are designed to be used once and thrown away.
Although I appreciate that these products have been designed with the comfort of your customers in mind, it’s time for you as a company to acknowledge that the global plastic waste problem is a vast crisis that threatens our health, our oceans and our planet’s future.
8 million metric tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year. Your products are amongst them. Recycling is too little too late: of the 6 billion tonnes of plastics produced since the 1950s, under 10% has been recycled. It’s not enough. It’s time for urgent change.
Women want convenient and discreet feminine hygiene products. But women also want a future for their children and their children’s children. It’s time for your company to make a statement and to ditch the plastic. Tampax cardboard still comes with a cardboard applicator and a paper wrap. I am urging you to redesign your other products to eliminate single-use plastics, either through reverting to cardboard (and preferably switching to unbleached while you’re at it, we’re not nearly as fussy about the brilliant white of the applicator that will be in contact with our vagina for all of five seconds as you might think, you know) or by investing some of your profit into a sustainable future by researching new materials.
In fact, in order to offset the billions of pieces of virgin plastic you’ve already put into our environment, maybe you could even do both and pay into a fund to research and develop new materials?
Think of what good PR it would be for a major brand like yours to show its commitment to limiting our environmental devastation. And think of what a terribly irresponsible stance it is for you to continue to profit from plastics pollution.
Yours,
A customer.
RESPONSE, received 16/01/18:
Hi Ellie,
It’s great to hear that you’re thinking of our environment and I’d love to help you with this.
I’d like to assure you that here at Tampax, we are committed to improving our environmental sustainability profile while giving women a choice in how they manage their periods. Hygiene protection, such as tampons, is a very personal choice and we design our products with girls and women’s needs in mind.
While there will many who prefer to use non-applicator or cardboard applicators, there are others who prefer to use plastic applicators as they are more comfortable and easier to insert. Having understood that this is what women want and need, we offer both cardboard and plastic applicator tampons.
We constantly strive to reduce the impact of our products on natural resources and solid-waste systems worldwide and as such they are designed and manufactured to have as little impact on the environment as possible. That means we carefully choose the materials we use, make wise decisions about the energy we use, and minimize waste.
Like many supplies used for personal or medical care, pads and tampons cannot be recycled or flushed. So we have engineered our products to be compatible with existing solid waste disposal systems. When it comes to the proper disposal of our products, we provide education direct to girls and women on the proper disposal of personal care products and their packaging.
All our tampon packaging, wrappers, and leaflet in pack display the ‘bin it’ and the ‘do not flush’ logos. We recognise that in this matter we need a habit change. Even small adjustments, as little as having a bin in toilets so that women can discreetly dispose of the product and not flush it, can make a big difference.
This is why we will continue our communication to create good habits regarding tampon disposal. We are also working with groups like the Trash Free Seas Alliance (TFSA) that bring together industry leaders to focus on the reduction of ocean rubbish. Together with our education directly to women and girls, we will continue to work with the industry to drive true change and one day aspire to reach our vision of having zero consumer and manufacturing waste go into landfills.
We are fully committed to reducing the amount of waste from our Feminine Care plants worldwide and have reduced solid waste by 70% since 2010, with 8 of 10 plants running at zero-waste – instead of sending waste to landfills, we reuse it for manufacturing or convert it to energy.
We see sustainability as a responsibility and a business opportunity — reducing our environmental footprint is not only good for the business, it’s also good for the planet. I hope that this helps to assure you that we do also care about the environment and are always looking for ways in which we can lower our environmental impact.
I really hope that I’ve been able to help Ellie and if you have any further questions, just let me know and I’ll be more than happy to help.In the meantime, take care and enjoy the rest of your day.Very best wishes,KayleighConsumer Relations
“communication to create good habits regarding tampon disposal”: PR campaigns to make consumers think our pollution is their fault.
“disposal”: putting our pollutants out of sight where people stop thinking about it.
I emailed back the following:
Hi Kayleigh,
thanks for your response. If your products can’t be recycled or flushed, how do you envisage that you will reach a goal of having zero waste going to landfill? What date is this goal set for?
Ellie
Response received 17/01:
Thanks a lot for getting back to me.
During Earth Week in 2018, we released new sustainability goals called Ambition 2030. These broad-reaching goals have one purpose in mind, which is to enable and inspire positive impact on our environment and society while creating value for us as a company and you as a consumer.
In an effort to address two of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, finite resources and growing consumption, we’ve focused our ambitious goals in these specific areas.
I hope this website is helpful to you and gives you some reassurance for the future.
Thanks again for your time Ellie, have a lovely day.
Best wishes,
Kayleigh
I emailed back:
Hi Kayleigh,
no, it really doesn’t: most of that is horrendous PR waffle. Plastic recycling doesn’t work. Of the 6 billion metric tonnes of plastic made since the 1950s, under 10% of it has been recycled. Companies like Tampax need to get serious about making their products compostable and biodegradable as fast as possible. I don’t accept that your customers actively WANT plastic. They want convenience and comfort, but have you done any research that suggests your customers want plastics that take millions of years to biodegrade and cause untold damage along the way?
Below is a photo of the Tampax waste collected by one woman on one small beach last May. This is an absolute disgrace and your company is responsible. It’s shameful.
Your parent company, Procter and Gamble, is worth $200 billion. They can easily afford to invest in research and development for new materials for their products given the will power.
Could you please forward this mail to your superior and ask them to respond to my queries?
thanks,
Ellie
And one final answer:
Hi Ellie,
Thanks very much for getting back to me and I’m really sorry that you feel this way – it was never our intention.
I can certainly pass on your feedback for any future innovations and appreciate the time you’ve taken to get in contact with us.
Enjoy the rest of your day Ellie.
UPDATE 21/01/19:
The very wonderful Janet from Ireland dropped me a line to say she had emailed too! Below is the response she got:
Hi Janet,
It’s great to hear that you’re thinking of our environment and I’d love to help you with this.
I’d like to assure you that here at Tampax, we are committed to improving our environmental sustainability profile while giving women a choice in how they manage their periods. Hygiene protection, such as tampons, is a very personal choice and we design our products with girls and women’s needs in mind. While there will be many who prefer to use non-applicator or cardboard applicators, there are others who prefer to use plastic applicators as they are more comfortable and easier to insert. Having understood that this is what women want and need, as you know we offer both cardboard and plastic applicator tampons.
We constantly strive to reduce the impact of our products on natural resources and solid-waste systems worldwide and as such they are designed and manufactured to have as little impact on the environment as possible. That means we carefully choose the materials we use, make wise decisions about the energy we use, and minimize waste.
Like many supplies used for personal or medical care, pads and tampons cannot be recycled or flushed. So we have engineered our products to be compatible with existing solid waste disposal systems. When it comes to the proper disposal of our products, we provide education direct to girls and women on the proper disposal of personal care products and their packaging. All our tampon packaging, wrappers, and leaflet in pack display the ‘bin it’ and the ‘do not flush’ logos. We recognise that in this matter we need a habit change. Even small adjustments, as little as having a bin in toilets so that women can discreetly dispose of the product and not flush it, can make a big difference. This is why we will continue our communication to create good habits regarding tampon disposal.
We are also working with groups like the Trash Free Seas Alliance (TFSA) that bring together industry leaders to focus on the reduction of ocean rubbish. Together with our education directly to women and girls, we will continue to work with the industry to drive true change and one day aspire to reach our vision of having zero consumer and manufacturing waste go into landfills.
We are fully committed to reducing the amount of waste from our Feminine Care plants worldwide and have reduced solid waste by 70% since 2010, with 8 of 10 plants running at zero-waste – instead of sending waste to landfills, we reuse it for manufacturing or convert it to energy. We see sustainability as a responsibility and a business opportunity — reducing our environmental footprint is not only good for the business, it’s also good for the planet. To find out more about our goals please visit https://us.pg.com/environmental-sustainability/
It may be good to know that we have recently created a technology that can recycle polypropylene into nearly new condition which has the potential to revolutionize the plastics recycling industry.
I hope that this helps to assure you that we do also care about the environment and are always looking for ways in which we can lower our environmental impact.
If you have any questions or there is anything else I can help you with, please do get back in touch.
Your feedback is very important in helping me provide the best consumer experience. In the next couple of days (and maybe before your case is complete), you’ll receive a survey that I really hope you have time to complete, as I’d love to know your opinion on my service and where I can improve. Thank you!
Kind regards
the plastic letters project 