We all know that all good things must eventually come to an end. Whether you’ve had your cup for two or ten years (kudos if you made it last that long!), the time will come when you have to say goodbye forever to your old cup and say hello to a new one! But how do we dispose of it without harming the environment and sending it to landfill? We’ve got some quirky suggestions below ;)
1, Burn your menstrual cup
If you don’t want to send your cup to landfill and just don’t have the time to contact your local recycling programs, then burn it! We just ask one thing from you: PLEASE don’t put your cup on the stove or light up in your home without some precautions first – be smart about it! Burning your menstrual cup will take time, so set up a bonfire or throw it in your fireplace (make sure to use firewood and not duraflame). Why do we love this option? The cup will turn into ash (which you can compost) and leave no trace behind! That’s a 🔥lituation🔥 right there.
2, Turn it into a keychain
Give your bag or keys a little bling by converting your cup into a keychain! Don’t know where to start? There are tons of DIY keychains on the internet you could get inspiration from and apply to your menstrual cup. Just poke a hole on the stem and you’ll be on your way to dangling that thing around everywhere you go!
3, Make a Christmas ornament
If you haven’t already noticed, a menstrual cup has a bell-shaped form – so get creative and add that silicone bell on the Christmas tree!
A few suggestions:
- Poke a hole on the stem in order to fit thin string through it and hang it!
- Decorate the cup as you please (maybe give it a face?).
- Put it back in the pouch it came in, and have a mysterious baggie hanging from the tree!
4, Say hello to your new stress ball (or cup?)
I don’t know about you, but having something to squeeze can feel relaxing, especially if you’re stressed out or nervous (we’ve all been there). Instead of browsing the internet for a regular stress or squeeze ball, just use your menstrual cup! Not only is squeezing a menstrual cup with your hands extremely satisfying, but you might find yourself doing some of the folding methods subconsciously. Try it out for yourself ;)
5, Water your little plants
Have small succulent plants or flowers that can’t handle a glass full of water? Then your cup might be the right size for that little pot you got sitting by your windowsill. It’s a great way to repurpose your menstrual cup and a friendly reminder to keep watering your plants! Simply sit your menstrual cup (now watering container) right by the pot and hydrate your plant friends!
Have some more crazy ideas? Let us know how you would recycle your menstrual cup and we'll add it to the list!
Hi Janice, thanks for your question! If your Lunette Cup has any visible signs of deterioration – like cracks, scratches, or heavy discoloration, then it’s time for a new Cup. :)
-Team Lunette
How do you know it’s time to dispose or change your cup?
I think these cups are such a fabulous invention! I hardly know how I dealt with tampons for so many years now that I know how much better it can be! The money and garbage saved alone is worth it for women to try to get around the learning curve of using one! In 4 years, I’ve never had a leak, not even when I 1st started using it.
I have pcos, but now that I’m out of my teens and 20s, my period is regular, I just rarely ovulate. It’s notoriously difficult to conceive with pcos because the excess of male androgens causes ovulation to be very unreliable if not nearly absent. Did you know women having trouble conceiving use these cups, with great success I might add, to help them conceive? By simply filling them with..ahem..“the proper required biological component” and then inserting like normal, it ensures it goes directly in the cervix where it should. A lot of women have success within the 1st few cycles of trying it.
I think that’s pretty cool as an off label use! Saving women the time, trouble, stress and of course money of complicated fertility procedures. Remember this in case you or someone you know is having trouble getting pregnant. Personally this would be the 1st thing I would try since for just tens of dollars this might be the winning solution! Work smarter, not harder.
Just to reassure all of the people here worried about burning stuff being pollutive – Not necessarily. Pollution is caused by burning stuff that leaves bad stuff behind. Most medical grade materials are designed to not be pollutive upon incineration, which is the standard bio-waste disposal method used for healthcare waste, worldwide.
@Team Lunette: may be you could just publish here the composition of the waste produced by burning the cups, to put everyone’s minds at ease.
Now, to address the Burn vs. Chuck question – It simply makes Zero sense to leave something that has a high likelihood of being a harbor for pathogen (disease causing germs) to lie waiting for the next carrier lying around, including in landfills. A dormant pathogen that caused just a minor annoyance for a species earlier (let’s say, 50-100 years ago) could cause a pandemic if the population was exposed to it again and hence had slowly lost their immunity against that particular pathogen because of medical advances, meanwhile. NOT the legacy I recommend leaving behind for future generations. This is precisely why medical waste is always incinerated.
Please remember (I beg you, as a healthcare professional – other medical workers that you know of and who you trust will confirm this to you if asked) when thinking of the environment, to also think from Land / Ocean pollution and Pathogen proliferation perspectives.
Let’s stop using the planet as a dustbin, please?
Nice ideas! For those who are reading these comments, I’d like to point out that Menstrual Mentors are not chemistry teachers. Instead of asking them about burning cups or stating uninformed opinions that can be interpreted as facts about how burning cups is worse for the environment than throwing them away, do a bit of research.