Unipads grows crops with menstrual-blood compost to end a Gujarat kitchen taboo

Unipads sells affordable reusable cloth pads in India, where menstruation is widely treated as impurity: in rural Gujarat, 82% of women are barred from kitchens, food and crops while menstruating, and many believe a drop of menstrual blood can destroy an entire harvest. The belief silences period talk, discourages pad use and feeds period poverty and shame.

Have women compost used organic pads in village farm pits, then grow real crops with the enriched soil — public proof that menstrual blood feeds food, not destroys it.

Unipads asked women in Jamnagar and Devbhumi Dwarka to dispose of used, GOTS-certified organic pads containing menstrual blood in 'Ukedas', the compost pits already common in village farms. The pads break down and release nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, enriching compost that farmers then spread on fields. Thousands of pits were marked to draw attention, so every compost heap doubled as a public lesson in menstrual biology.

45+ crop varieties grew with the blood fertilizer — including 624 tons of groundnut, 48 tons of cumin, 5 tons of wheat and 72 tons of vegetables. Elected members of the Indian Parliament and Gujarat Assembly made public appeals reaching 1.6 million people, 100,000+ farmers began encouraging menstruating women around food, and 5 NGOs joined to scale the work. D&AD 2024 gave it a Wood Pencil in Impact.

In rural Gujarat, menstruation carries a heavy taboo: 82% of women are not allowed inside kitchens or near crops and food while menstruating, because menstrual blood is believed to be so impure that a single drop can destroy an entire harvest. Unipads, an Ahmedabad maker of affordable reusable cloth pads, saw the belief as both a health problem and a business problem — it silences period talk, discourages pad use and entrenches period poverty.

Instead of lecturing communities, Unipads and VML India put the taboo to a practical test. Women were asked to dispose of used, certified-organic pads containing menstrual blood in 'Ukedas', the compost pits already found on village farms, where cattle dung, fodder and kitchen waste collect through the year. The pads decompose and release nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into the compost — the same nutrients crops need — and farmers spread the enriched soil on their fields.

The first seasons in Jamnagar and Devbhumi Dwarka produced more than 45 varieties of crops, including groundnut, cumin, wheat, tomatoes, carrots and cabbage — thousands of marked compost pits turned each village into an open-air demonstration. Unipads also announced a public dinner whose menu featured produce grown with the blood fertilizer, forcing the conversation about menstruation and food out into the open.

The visible results moved the debate: elected parliamentarians and state legislators made public appeals reaching 1.6 million people to break the taboo, more than 100,000 farmers began encouraging menstruating women around food, and five NGOs joined to scale the initiative. The work earned a D&AD 2024 Wood Pencil in the Impact category.

It turned a superstition into a falsifiable experiment: if menstrual blood really killed crops, the fields would fail — they didn't.

The mechanism used infrastructure already in every village, so participation cost the community nothing new.

Crops became shared, visible proof that travelled through markets and meals, not just arguments.

It attacked the root business problem too: when the taboo weakened, women could talk about periods and adopt proper hygiene products.

To overturn a superstition, don't argue with it — let the feared object do something visibly useful, in public, at village scale, so the community's own harvest becomes the evidence.

Unipads followed the harvests with public events whose menus featured produce grown with the blood fertilizer, turning eating into a ritual of debunking. Indian business and CSR media framed the initiative as proof that period blood is a resource rather than a pollutant, and founder Geeta Solanki kept pairing product design with taboo-breaking stunts — extending her earlier 'Adeli' pop-up restaurant, which challenged the rule that menstruating women must not cook. The work also won a D&AD 2024 Wood Pencil in Impact.