Hello!  We are back with your guide to recent menstrual news, art, and more!

• The British blog PositiveLife presents us with a thoughtful article on the negative taboo that surrounds menstruation, what we can do about it and how to think positively.
• GeekFeminism geeks out about menstruation in this blog post.  In the comments section, the author includes this link which has some fascinating photos of human ovulation caught on camera during a surgery.
• Factoidz and GreenLiving101 encourage you to go green and save green with the menstrual cup in this article.
• Period Positivity website My Moon Days presents the idea of a period flag and why it’s useful.
• YouTuber Glozell gives us an awesome video about her thoughts upon starting use of the Diva Cup.

Here comes your weekly round-up of the latest in menstrual news, art, activism, and more!

• One of our favorite news quiz radio shows to listen to at work, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! from NPR,  had a question in last week’s show about Disney’s The Story of Menstruation for George Romero.  Listen to the segment here.  Quite amusing!
• 1 Girl 2 Wheels 3 Countries 4 Education: Eleanor (pictured) is biking across Asia to raise awareness for two charities (Girls Education International & Stepping Stones) and of course using GladRags pads and her Moon Cup during the trip!  She’s a GladRags Guerilla, are you?
• The community at Feministing.com features “An Ode to the Menstrual Cup” — be sure to read the comments too!
• Mommy blogger Keeper of the Home has a great entry on “Cloth or Disposable – It Applies to More Than Just Diapers“
• The Greenists open up a discussion about menstrual cups and note that men should be a part of it, too!

Hello and welcome to this week’s installment of Menstrual Mondays, wherein we give you the latest in menstrual news, musings, art, and more!

• Adventures in Menstruating is a great, funny blog!  Read their latest on menstruating zombies, the period fairy, and euphemisms.
• Read How Menstruation Created Math by John Kellermeier on Tacoma Community College’s website to learn more about early calenders and how mathematics began.
• Bitch Magazine has a great post on vagina related crafts posted on etsy.com, the ebay-like craft sharing website.  Includes work by our twitter friend, vulvalovelovely, who does some intricate vulva necklaces and a super cute giant plush uterus.  Read A Vagtastic Voyage Through Etsy. Possibly NSFW.
• Are you on twitter and want to learn more about menstruation?  Follow these ladies on GladRags’ new menstrual tweeters list!
• Blogger, Badger Meets World, writes a colorful article about using a menstrual cup during heavy bleeding.
• Fashion Blogger, My Wardrobe Today, writes an article about how great and easy it is to go green with the Diva Cup!
• Bust calls out RedBook for their sorry excuse for a review on FLOW: The Cultural History of Menstruation in this article.

Last month we posted about participating in Bike Transportation Alliance’s Bike Commute Challenge.  Now we’re excited to share the amazing results of this month-long competition!

Number of participating workplaces:
1240

Number of riders:
11,118

Number of riders new to bike commuting:
2,693

Total number of miles biked:
1,244,718

That’s a lot of bike commuters and a lot of miles!  We had so much fun challenging ourselves to bike to work every single day (as a team, we logged 490 miles in September!) and checking our ranking on the BTA website — we even received a plaque for our 100% workplace participation rate!

You can read more about the Bike Commute Challenge — including the guy who biked over 1,800 miles in just 21 days! — at Bike Portland’s blog.  Thanks again to the Bike Transportation Alliance for organizing such an enjoyable competition and to all the other teams who participated!

Team GladRags from left to right: Alex, Brenda, and Tracy

Here at GladRags, it’s important to us to be as sustainable as possible.  From the way we package our products to the way we get to the office, we try to make the best choice possible for the environment.  All three of us bike to work fairly routinely, but when we heard about the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s Bike Commute Challenge, we were excited to really put ourselves to the test! The challenge is “a friendly competition — workplace against workplace — to see who can bike to work more during the month of September. The workplaces with the highest percentage of commutes by bicycle during the month win!”  There are also weekly drawings for prizes and discounts for bike parts/accessories at local bicycle shops. The Bike Commute Challenge website is really fun and interactive.  Each day you work, you log your mileage on the calendar and your total miles, calories burned, pounds of CO2 saved, and participation rate are automatically calculated.  Check it out: as a team we’ve already cycled over 232 miles!

As of this posting, we’re #1 in our category (Business or Non-Profit with 2-4 employees) with a participation rate of 100%!  While there are no official prizes offered to winning teams by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance — other than glory, of course! — there are plenty of benefits from just participating (better health, a reduced carbon footprint, and the simple joy of just riding a bicycle, to name a few!).

One day last week we all needed to attend a meeting about three miles away, so we hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.  It was a beautiful day and so much fun to ride as a group, plus the midday exercise perked us up.  As soon as we made it back, we all logged on to add the trip to our mileage!

If you’re in Oregon and SW Washington, it’s not too late to join the competition!  You can still sign up and enter your commutes retroactively. The website is also available for bike commuters from outside the area to use, although you won’t be part of the official challenge.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated on our progress and hope to see some of you at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s after party on October 8th!

Here at GladRags we love all things sustainable!  This includes bike commuting to work for all of us.  There are more benefits to biking than just sustainable living.  You feel good, spend less money, and get to enjoy the scenery of your town.  And now this!  There was a delightful little add-on to the stimulus bill:  The Bicycle Commuter Tax Provision – a $20 a month tax credit to employees for riding their bike to work!   We GladRags employees love it! See more information here.  The provision was heralded by Portland's very own bike commuting representative Earl Blumenauer.

If you ride to work a substantial amount of days, ask your employer to offer it!

Do you ride your bike to work or around town?  If not, what are your major barriers?  If you do, what do you think is the best part?

My friend Melody works for another great Portland company, Emerita . They make the healthy lube we sell as well as other great women's bodycare products. She travels all the time and recently had an encounter with a fellow air traveler who happened to be a Greenpeace employee. Thanks for spreading the word, Melody!

  –Brenda

The other day I educated a Greenpeace canvasser on the importance of reusable menstrual products. It was really a ‘preaching to the choir’ moment, but still something well worth documenting.

What started out as the Greenpeace canvasser’s pitch, (I’ll call him Greg), on the evils of Kimberly Clark cutting down old growth trees quickly extended into my diatribe on how we should all stop the use of paper towels, use hemp toilet paper despite the likely roughness we may experience and demand that Kimberly Clark seek sustainable supply chains or halt their paper business altogether. Greg was a taken back, but engaged in my oration.

The segue into reusable menstrual products came when I compared a local Portland company’s business model to Kimberly Clark’s agenda of waste and massive scale environmental destruction. I told Greg about GladRags, and how the company’s concept of using soft, washable, reusable cloth for a woman’s menstrual cycle is an idea that can bring us back to earth, to living more sustainably.

“Greg!” I excitedly exclaimed, “This is something every woman can do to cut down on her environmental impact! Does Greenpeace know about GladRags?!”

Greg nodded in agreement and appreciated that I was passionate about alternative menstrual options. He politely interrupted me as I started to give details about my GladRags pantyliner experience on a recent flight back East, by asking if would consider renewing my Greenpeace membership.

Noticing the wedding band on his ring finger I confirmed that Greg was indeed married and obliged to renew my Greenpeace membership on one condition, that he pledge to tell his wife and other women in his life about GladRags and we can use our menstrual cycles to save the planet, one GladRags at time.

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It's a total advertising ploy by Madsen (post a link and enter to win) for this cargo bike, but I got suckered in because I think it would be so great to have this to haul stuff. I got groceries yesterday on my bike and could barely stuff everything in my 20-year-old paniers. The weather has been stunning in Portland the past week, and bikers have been out in droves. I'm loving it and vowing that I will stop being a fair-weather commuter and get serious this fall when rains come back. 

We were recently contacted by Srini Perera who asked us for donations of menstrual pads to help with aid efforts in Sri Lanka. Srini lives in California now, but she is from Sri Lanka. She, her husband, and family all work hard to help procure supplies to send there. Currently thousands of displaced families are living in temporary camps in northern Sri Lanka.  Rather than sending disposable pads to a community that is struggling with many basic needs and doesn’t have waste disposal systems to handle all of the trash created by such products, Srini is encouraging donations of GladRags for a long-term, sustainable solution. Srini and her family formed ECSWorld.com to inspire and coordinate donations.  GladRags is happy to support their work.  Purchase any number of GladRags Regular Day Pads 3packs (SL3) to donate and GladRags will donate two more pads! We have set up a special product page for her donors to use (and anyone else who wants to help). Srini has a shipment going to Sri Lanka on May 20.   Order quickly to make sure your donation makes the cut!  This donation would make an excellent Mother's Day present for the socially conscious mother. To purchase pads for women in Sri Lanka, click here. To read more about ECS World, click here.

I know it's very retro, but I still get a morning newspaper subscription. Unless I shred them for my worm bin, or use for a painting drop cloth, they go straight into the recycle bin. But here's a great way to recycle them in a more useful manner. I'm not much of a gardener these days, because my CSA delivers almost more veggies than I can use, but if you have a green thumb,  check out this great way to make seedling pots -  here are the instructions, courtesy Little House in the Suburbs.