Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:43 pm on 2 May 2018.
Would you also agree that what we need to do is look at sustainable solutions? This isn't just about tackling poverty and tackling dignity. When you look at the amount of tampons that are dumped down the sewage system every year and the absolute unsustainability of this, we have to also look at educating girls about their bodies and how they function and how to insert a Mooncup, because a Mooncup costs somewhere between £15 to £20 and will last you for many years. That is a really important emphasis I want to place on this debate, because if we rush to produce more sanitary bins and we rush to redesign toilets in schools, we need to take account of the possibility that in the future, girls will be much more relaxed and conversant with how their bodies function and therefore will be able to use Mooncups, which means that they don't have to go to the toilet every four hours, they don't have to have the possible risk of toxic shock syndrome that you can get from tampons, and it also means that they're not having to shell out all this money to the companies that are producing these products, which charge an awful lot more than they cost to produce. So, I'd just like to raise that and ensure that we bear that in mind in the way we're going to take forward this debate.