Meg Ferrigno had already been living and working among nomadic Tibetans for years when she went on the service trip that would change everything. “I was translating for a midwife,” Ferrigno recalls. “We saw over 100 patients and every single one of them was reporting severe infections and horrible symptoms.” Lacking access to menstrual products, the women in the area stemmed blood flow with items like straw and yak wool, which caused preventable health problems.
Determined to help, Ferrigno started distributing pads—only to realize that the plastic-loaded products were solving one problem but causing another. She partnered with a factory and, after much trial and error, developed a compostable pad that degrades within six months.
During the pandemic, “I spent a lot of time in the sanitary hygiene aisles,” Ferrigno says. “I recognized that there weren’t compostable products readily available for menstruators [in the US].” In 2022, she began selling her sustainable period products under the name Moon Pads, a certified B Corp operating with a “buy one, give one” model to distribute free pads in Tibet, India, Nepal, Nigeria, Mexico, and the States, where, according to Period.org, one in four students struggles to afford necessary menstrual products.
“Giving people access to these products helps improve public health,” Ferrigno says. “It helps improve school attendance, which helps improve literacy. It helps improve our economy, because if menstruators aren’t working for a week out of each month, that hits our economy. People don’t realize it’s a huge, cross-cutting issue.”
