In honour of International Women’s Day at the start of the week, we’ve had a week of women’s & sexual health themed posts and giveaways. Up until now, they’ve been more focused on the wonderful range of green sanitary options available but I wanted to shift things on a bit today.

I’ve been thinking about the topic for today for a while – I’ve just never had the time to do all the research on the area I’d planned so I thought I’d open it up for discussion instead.

It’s an inflammatory statement that annoys a lot of people but it’s true – one of the worst things you can for the environment as an individual (well, two individuals) is have a child. Even if you do everything you possibly can to minimise their consumption and waste, the child still going to use up a helluva lot of the world’s resources in their lifetime. That’s not necessarily a reason not to have a child – but it’s a reason to be careful to make sure you don’t have them by mistake.

So what’s the best contraception as far as the environment is concerned?
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We had an email from Tamara last month that got buried in my inbox but I found it again so here it is:

I wanted suggestions on how to recycle pill boxes… like the kind you get with birth control.

I thought I could use one as a wallet, but you see, twelve a year for an indefinite number of years, and a wallet just isn’t going to be a good enough idea for very long. Any suggestions?

I’ve never taken the pill myself (because I can’t take any pills without choking – very annoying but all in my head) but unless US television has lied to me over the years, in the US at least, they come in clam-shell shaped containers which help you keep track of the days. And all americans live in giant mansions or on ranches. And everyone’s problems are solved at neatly after 30 minutes.

So any suggestions for the clam-shells? I’d be tempted to use them to hold beads but suspect every time I opened the clasp they’d go flying across the room – and while that would be funny the first three or four times…

(In the UK, I believe the pilles usually come in blister packs with the days written around the edge. On a related note, we’ve also featured plastic pill and vitamin bottles in the past too.)