Hi! I’m Alyssa, GladRags intern for the summer! My job is to create an informative and fun zine for young women, and another for young girls about alternative menstrual products. I am hoping you, fellow GladRags followers, can help me come up with a great name for each zine. I’m hoping to have the title be straightforward, but witty. Thanks for your help!

The weather is beautiful again, which makes this the perfect season to spend time outside!  Your Green Goal this week is to make one trip on foot or by bike, instead of driving or taking the bus. There are many benefits to using alternate forms of transportation.  Not only are biking and walking awesome forms of exercise, but you’ll be traveling independent of environment-destroying gasoline or electricity.  You’ll see and experience your town in an entirely different way.  You can interact with your community, discover places you never knew existed, and even pick fresh fruit!

Often people are afraid of looking sweaty when they get to their destination.  Try short distances at first to become more comfortable with what clothes you need to wear and how much extra time you might need to give yourself to cool off.  You will soon end up feeling energized and good about yourself when you arrive at your destination!   Don’t forget a helmet — and bike lights, too, if you plan on biking at night.

Here at GladRags we love biking everywhere!  Of course we do have the advantage of living in Portland, OR, a biking mecca.  Tomorrow I am representing GladRags at Bike Economics: a fundraiser showcasing local, woman-owned, bicycle-oriented businesses.  I am really excited to connect with other bicycle-loving women in my community.  If you are in Portland, you should join us!

Do you bike or walk everywhere?  What obstacles did you face when you started?  Comment and let us know what biking and walking is like where you live!

We have a short and sweet Menstrual Monday today.  Enjoy!

• The SF Weekly Heartless Doll brings us a helpful public service announcement with Dudes of the World: Menstruation Does Not Make Women Insane.
• A Columbus radio station brings us 5 Fab Essential Earth Day Accessories including the menstrual cup!  See picture to the right for another fab accessory.

Also, we would like to thank everyone who has donated pads to Beth’s Girls so far.  We already have almost 100 pads to give to girls in need in Zambia!  But we always need more.  Read about why you should donate here.

We know the GladRags community does much more than use alternative menstrual products.  As a group we are doing so many things to keep our planet green, from carpooling and composting to gardening and going organic!  So thank you, for everything you do to keep our planet green and beautiful!

This Earth Day, we hope you’ll help us on a new mission: providing cloth pads to girls in Africa through the Elizabeth Bowers Zambian Education Fund (EBZEF), an organization which strives to help Zambian girls stay in school and achieve their dreams.  The recipients of EBZEF’s scholarship assistance call themselves “Beth’s Girls” and have many hopes for the future — and the confidence that they will make their visions come true!

Many of us know already that when girls lack adequate menstrual supplies, they are often unable to complete their educations.  But there’s more to the story: when disposable products are donated to these girls in need, their disposal can be problematic for the local waste system.  For example, in northern Zambia garbage is piled up and periodically burned.  If every woman in the area was contributing their used menstrual supplies, imagine the sudden swell in garbage!

Not to mention the fact that the donation of disposables requires ongoing shipments of new products; with the donation of cloth pads instead, once a girl has enough cloth pads for her cycle, she won’t need to rely on outside donors every month.

GladRags is so excited to be working with EBZEF, and hope you will help a girl in Zambia follow her dreams by clicking here to learn more about how to donate cloth pads.  Forty GladRags Day Pads  have already been donated to Beth’s Girls by caring members of our community — we hope you will join them in their generosity!

Hello and welcome to the newest installment of Menstrual Mondays, wherein we review this week in menstrual news, blog entries, art, activism, and more!

•  The Chic Ecologist brings us an installment of the Environmental Impact of Everyday Things focused on the impact of menstrual products.  She goes into some interesting detail about what happens to the menstrual products that are thrown away and the history of green-washing such products. (image to the left is take from her article)
• Check out this week’s Do Good of the Week from GladRags Guerilla, Marta, who runs Be Good Do Good Yoga.  This week’s segment is all about natural birth control methods and why you should check them out.
• Girl w/ Pen has an impassioned editorial about the state of menstrual product advertising in Pop Goes Feminism: Does Your Period Make You Blue?
• Awesome blogger The Sexist has a hilarious article about the 5 Most Feminine Feminine Hygiene Products (note: they are not all menstrual products).
• Blog a la Cart shares a funny little story about her husband’s reaction to her excitement over first using the menstrual cup.

A short and sweet Menstrual Monday post today is coming at ya!

• Sify News presents a great article about artist Ashmina Ranjit.  She grew up in a conservative household in Nepal and now creates menstrual inspired artwork designed to educate and challenge long held beliefs about impurity.  Read more in Woman’s Blood Inspires rebel Art in Nepal.
• Did you know menstrual blood contains stem cells?  You can learn about the latest research in this area in the new article from the Santa Barbara Independent, Stem Cells in Menstrual Blood: They Can Even Become Neurons. 
• Despite the odd name, the chapter called Vulva Care–Keeping Your Kitty Happy actually contains some good advice from Psychology Today.
• Actress Eunice Wong shares her take on switching to alternative menstrual products here.
  

If we’ve learned anything from the amazing Bea of The Zero Waste Home, it’s that recycling should be a last resort; out of the 3 R’s — reducing, reusing, recycling — reducing the amount of waste you produce has the most positive eco-impact.

While cutting back on what we choose to consume is one step, what about things you didn’t even want in the first place, like junk mail?

This week’s Green Goal is to analyze the contents of your mailbox.  Take some time to really pay attention to the items that go straight from your mailbox to the recycle bin, then follow the steps below based on your findings!

Junk Mail

Register with DMAchoice to handpick which direct mail offers you’d like to receive — or remove your name from its direct mail lists entirely.

Credit Offers

Head over to OptOutPrescreen.com to stop receiving unsolicited offers of pre-approved credit or insurance.

Statements

Many utility companies, banks, and credit cards offer paperless billing.  Take advantage by signing up for e-statements whenever possible.

Catalogs

Removing your name from the Direct Mail list won’t stop you from receiving catalogs from companies you’ve purchased from in the past.  You can either contact the company directly or see if you can cancel the catalog through a site like Catalog Choice.

Yellow Pages

Enter your zip code into The Yellow Pages Association’s site to get information on how to opt-out of the yellow pages delivered in your area.

Everything Else

You can try writing “refused” and sending the junk mail back, or call the company responsible for the mailing and request to be taken off their list.

Keep in mind that most of these tactics to eliminate junk mail can take up to six weeks to go into effect, so you won’t necessarily see a decrease right away.  But with a little bit of monitoring, effort, and patience, soon the only things you’ll find in your mailbox will be birthday presents and postcards from friends!

• Super Green Girl wonders Does Green = Inconvenient? and what’s wrong (or right) about inconvenience?  This is a great article about things most of us try not to think about.
• This One’s for the Girls: Green Your Period from the Greenest Dollar presents some good reasons not to use disposable menstrual products along with multiple options.
• Fabulous website and post: The Zero Waste Home: Zero Waste Bathroom.  She thinks of everything!
• Learn how to crochet a (non-usable) Moon Cup (see photo) using this handy guide.  This website is slightly naughty, so don’t visit this link at work!
• We are featured in this month’s Mothering Magazine!  Pick up a copy today for a great article about reusables.
• Hilarious: Girl Welcomed to Womanhood with 4-page Pamphlet from The Onion.

Check out the View tomorrow (3/9) for more period talk with the authors of Flow:The Cultural History of Menstruation 11am EST.

• Occidental's Feminist blog heralds the arrival of the Vaginal Monologues on their campus with a delightful article on the benefits of using menstrual cups.
• Blogger Crunchy Chicken shares with us her Sex and Sustainability seminar slides (woo alliteration!) from a recent talk she gave in Eugene.  She discusses eco-friendly menstrual products, toys, lube, and more! PS: Think twice before opening this one at the office.
• If you are in or around Chicago be sure to check out the lecture tomorrow (2/9) on "Sanitary Technology in Nepal: Menstrual Cup Adoption and Effect on Education" by Emily Oster, Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.  This talk looks really interesting and makes me wish I was in Chicago!  If you go, please tell us about it.
• A writer on the staff of The Pitch, Kansas City's News Blog, has found an old copy of Cosmopolitan in which the article "Are Woman Troubles Out of Style?" appears.  Anthropological hilarity ensues here.
• One Green Generation takes on Greening Your Menstrual Cycle in one of their latest articles.  The author surveys all the different types of alternative menstrual products in this great review.
• The blog A Month Without Monsanto gives GladRags a shout out in Monsanto Out of My Panties!
• There was sure a lot of "humor" about the new Apple iPad, unfortunately it was mostly at the expense of women.  Following are some great article addressing the issue:
  • "The iPad: A Product from the He-Mans Woman-Hater's Club?" on Bust Magazine
  • "It's the subtle things: iPad edition" on Feministing
  • "The Guy with a Good Attitude Toward Menstruation" on Re:Cycling
  • "Misogyny's Last Frontier: Feminists and the iPad" on Gourmet Goddess an open Salon blog
  • The image is from Jezebel's "Graphic Humor with Apple's New iPad"

Coming at you from GladRags Headquarters in sunny Portland, Oregon is Menstrual Mondays, your one stop for the latest in menstrual news, art, activism, and more!

•  Mommy blog, Our Sentiments, has a great entry touting the amazing DivaCup.  While she agrees that it may be hard to get used to in the beginning, she is sure to note the benefits far out weigh those early troubles.
• Li’s New Years’ Eco Tips! not only encourages the use of cloth menstrual pads, but has tons more suggestions to make 2010 your greenest year yet!
• Shemiranibrahim.com shares with us a very in-depth article: Menstruation: The Sacred Cycle in which she approaches PMS in a whole new light.
• In a more compact article, Pamela Madsen of DivineCaroline brings us a way to Think About Menstruation As Providing Wisdom.
• Re:Cycling, the awesome menstrual blog, points out the obvious: menstrual activists are ahead of the game.  Blood red lips are now in fashion (see pic)!
  
• Nature Moms Blog has a great post by Tiffany Washko on alternative menstrual products & why you should use them.  Check out Alternative Menstrual Products – Ditch the Disposables.
• Frugal Megan writes about persistence when using a DivaCup or other menstrual cup in this great article: For Woman Only: The Diva Cup.
• Crunchy Chicken announces the winner of their GladRags giveaway here.  Congrats!  If you didn’t win here, check out this weeks bonus below!

**Extra Special Bonus: The Eco-Babe’s Guide to Greening It! is hosting a great giveaway for our Color Pad Sampler Kit!  Check out her great website here and click on “Enter to Win Free Green Products” for more details.