Good morning. Thank you to this committee for conducting this important study and for the invitation to be here today with my industry colleagues.
My name is Linda Biggs, and I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of joni, a 21st-century period care brand. We're making sustainable period care accessible to everyone who needs it.
When we first launched joni in 2020, we read a statistic by Plan International Canada that one in three women under the age of 25 is unable to afford period care in Canada. It was because of this statistic that we built a 5% giveback model, working with dozens of Canadian non-profits, like United Way, Moon Time Sisters and the Period Purse, over the last three years to distribute over 110,000 donated products across the country, including to remote areas and indigenous communities.
It was also because of this statistic and the distribution issues we saw that we created our innovative, direct-to-consumer packaging that allows us to ship for free anywhere in Canada. This means that someone living in a remote community who might otherwise pay $30 or more for a box of pads—if they can find one—now has access to organic and plastic-free products delivered to their home for the same price that someone living in an urban area has access to.
It is these types of innovative solutions that are needed as part of a team Canada approach to make menstrual equity possible in Canada.
According to freethetampons.org, 87% of people who menstruate have been caught off guard, and 34% of them will leave school, work or sports to find a solution. When over 26% of the population menstruates, having period care accessible, just like toilet paper, can impact over nine million people in Canada. Menstrual equity means accessible period care for everyone who needs it.
When I was growing up, I remember waiting in food bank lines with my mother. As a new immigrant from Mexico, she worked several jobs trying to make ends meet. As a competitive swimmer, I often got tampons from friends and wore them longer than recommended because we just didn't have enough. While I didn't have the terminology of “period poverty”, I knew that our funds didn't cover basic household needs. Oftentimes, donated period care products are bottom-of-the-barrel, plastic-based options, and the expectation is that you should just be happy with what you get.
There is a level of dignity that comes from being able to choose what works best for your body on your menstrual cycle. Sustainable period care should not be a luxury.
Today, I'm in a much more privileged position, yet even as the founder of a period care brand, I'm still caught off guard. Just last year, my daughter started her first period on our way back from Nova Scotia. On our last leg, I went from bathroom to bathroom at night in the airport, trying to find an option since I had packed all of my products in my checked luggage. The dispensers I found were broken or empty, or I didn't have the right change, and no stores were open. It was in about the fifth bathroom that I found a pad on the counter that, thankfully, someone had left behind, so I could take it back to my daughter.
Even with all my privilege, I am also caught off guard. Conventional distribution methods like paid dispensers don't necessarily mean accessible period care. This is why we have recently designed, in partnership with two Canadian universities, an award-winning smart “freevend” commercial dispenser that dispenses bamboo, biodegradable and plastic-free pads and 100% organic cotton tampons with compostable wrappers. Compared to a conventional plastic-based pad that takes over 300 years to break down, plastic-free pads break down, on average, in 12 months, in the right conditions.
This model works to make sustainable pads and tampons accessible in public places, just like toilet paper.
As a company, we're committed to driving innovation forward in this industry with our non-profit partners and industry colleagues who are here today. Our innovations support new labour code changes and go further to support any private organization choosing to make its workplace more equitable by providing free products to its workers, all contributing to what we call an ecosystem of accessibility.
Just like we wouldn't question having toilet paper in places of work, regardless of whether they are in-office or hybrid, the same consideration is needed for 26% of the population when it comes to menstrual products. joni is part of the Sustainable Menstrual Equity Coalition—SMEC—which is a coalition of Canadian women-led SMEs addressing period poverty, which is already providing innovative, sustainable solutions to Canadians, as well as internationally.
We believe it's important to make reusable and sustainable plastic-free disposable options accessible, and we ask each of you to call for a resolution to include sustainable options from women-led Canadian SMEs as part of the procurement process for the government menstrual equity program.
Thank you.