Generally we have 2 “traditional” choices for menstruation products: tampons and sanitary pads. Reusable options for both are the menstruation cups (as already mentioned) and washable thus reusable sanitary pads. As far as I know there are also reusable tampons but I don’t know anyone who uses them and they aren’t that widespread.
Menstruation cups are - especially when starting to use them - a bit messy. One has to empty them when they are full and ideally you should at least rinse it after every use. This is a bit uncomfortable and bloody in public bathrooms. Secondly, finding the correct size can be quite tricky especially since the cups are a bit more pricey. Thirdly, when a woman gets an IUD doctors generally recommend against using cups in the first few weeks/ months after insertion. And lastly, they’re simply not comfortable to wear for everyone.
Reusable sanitary pads are a bit different but in my experience don’t replace the traditional pads. Particularly during heavy flow days those simply don’t have the capacity to “catch everything”. Further, if you have to change the pad in public you will have to carry around the used one.
So yes, I agree with you, there are simpler ways to start taking care of one’s rubbish production :)
While TSS has ceased to be common in most places, our education about not leaving tampons / menstrual cups in for too long likely has a lot to do with it. If you have limited access to tampons or necessary resources maybe you leave them in longer than you should, harboring bacteria, etc. So idk, I care about sustainability too it’s clearly an important issue, but so is gender equity & women’s basic health & access to education...
Is Big Tampon really a thing?
Because the "environmental" option is difficult if not impossible sometimes:
1) not all vaginas are created equal. Finding the correct type and size of cups that fit can easily consume over a hundred € or more, and that's with Amazon shopping in a developed country. In a poor country with dysfunctional infrastructure? Good luck finding a cup in the first place and pray it somewhat fits. In the end, it's the classical "cheap shoe problem" - a poor person can't afford 100$ for a shoe that lasts 10 years and so has to spend 10$ a year on cheap shoes, while a rich person buys a decent shoe and doesn't have to worry for 10 years... the end result is, both spend the same amount of money, but the poor person has a poorer quality of life and causes more resource waste.
2) You need to clean reusable cups or panty liners. This requires access to clean boiling water and some sort of container to boil the product in - and I'd bet 99% of people aren't exactly fond of using containers they use to prepare food in for cleaning period products, especially in regions where women on their period are banished from the house / village.
Here is an excerpt from it.
> “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
> ...
> But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...
It wouldn't matter anyway, because the environmental impact of giving away those products for free is exactly zero: Women won't start to menstruate more to get free tampons.
Yes big tampon is really a thing (more about flow than size) but also so are slender/junior tampons for teenagers.