nashik women in nashik experienced a new dawn at the jeevan utsav an annual exhibition cum workshop here about meeting their sanitary requirements during menses in an ecofriendly way a nongovernmental organisation from udaipur was promoting the use of sanitary napkins made of cotton that are reusable and safe the napkins use the old technique with redefined style and specific cloth to ensure the users do not have to face problems of odour or staining the pads that have improvised cotton cloth with comfort and design appealing to women and reusable for up to at least three years with few conditions are manufactured by women selfhelp groups in udaipur and is being managed by the jatan sanstha they are being branded as uger the dawn the thought of reuse stems from need to beat environmentally harmful products that do decompose for centuries and from our culture of minimal damage to environment rajasi kulkarnidiwakar said promoting the natural napkinsshe added that on an average a woman uses more than 10000 sanitary pads in her lifetime collected together these would need to 250 cubic feet of landfill as they do not disintegrate easily more than 300 crore sanitary napkins are used every year gynaecologist shraddha walvekar said common sanitary pads have constituents that are known to be carcinogens coming in direct contact with thin and ultra sensitive skin they are likely to be absorbed in blood stream which can cause health problems for women hence cotton cloth with proper care is preferableintroduced for the first time at the annual event the cotton pads are otherwise available online shailaja patil one of the visitors to jeevan utsav said she has been using the pads since two years when learnt about them in udaipur we have switched over to use of these pads that are not only healthy but also easy to maintain they also contribute to the social development as women earn their living through it patil said when asked about how nashikties were responding to the product kulkarnidiwakar shared an example of how a woman saw the product at the exhibition and sent her daughter the next day to pick up a pack for them she expressed concern over environmental hazards of the normal pads and accepted cotton napkins this is a good sign kulkarni added jeevan utsav is annual feature organised jointly by sarvoday parivar nirmal gram nirman kendra marathi vidnyan parishad nashik vibhag lokadhar the exhibition cum workshop delving on numerous home to handmade ecofriendly products they also feature spinning the charkha for producing the thread and then manufacturing khadi cloth manufacturing products from terracotta that can be used for cooking nonstick cookware range here you have all kinds of earthen utensils to cook food we even have pressure cooker made of terracotta and the refrigerator with brandname mitticool that gives cool water and keeps vegetables fresh without using electricity kapil kale who ran tghe stall said the utsav also houses kitchen garden equipments and material to grow vegetables in