Our Mission

Flow for the Future is a student-run charity enterprise aiming to make safe, sustainable period-care more affordable and accessible. Our mission is to reduce the financial barrier currently putting off eco-conscious menstruaters from purchasing sustainable period products.

Now, that may sound like a pretty simple mission, but just like your sanitary pad, we’ve got layers. As a team of passionate volunteers, we really care about promoting environmental, menstrual and mental health as much as we can; there is such an overlap. So what started off as a humble mission has grown into an ambitious and exciting multi-channelled vision.

Safe and sustainable

Eco-friendly pads are not just greener, but also cleaner. Unlike most conventional pads, they don’t contain irritating plastics and harmful toxic chemicals that can impact reproductive health. However, profit-hungry brands sell this as a luxury with a steep price premium.

This is what we want to change. We think healthy, sustainable pads should be the standard and we’re willing to sacrifice profit to make that happen. Our altruistic business-model relies on charity benefits, such as gift-aid donations and grants to reduce the cost of our product. We’re also cutting corners by spending nothing on marketing and relying on organic customer acquisition by word of mouth, shares on social media and our activism campaigns.

Supporting students

Another focus of ours is getting sustainable period care into schools. As a demographic, students are the most concerned with the impact of climate change, driving them to want to be more sustainable. However, they also have the least freedom over what products they choose. All state-funded schools in the UK have access to a government funded grant for offering free period products to students. However, the majority either don’t use this money at all, or spend it on products that may harm the reproductive health of the children. Through awareness campaigning we hope to encourage more schools to offer sustainable, safe period products. We also hope this will encourage students to continue using such products in future. Profit generated from sales of our pads to schools, spending grant money, will be used to reduce our retail price for the public. This should make our ‘premium’ product more budget-friendly and encourage buyers to make the switch.

The bigger picture

As we expand we will also target offices, sports facilities, salons and other educational institutions – nobody will be safe from our plans! We think all establishments have a duty to provide period products to their customers and employees, just as they do with other essentials like toilet paper and hand soap. And we believe there’s no reason why those products can’t be safe and sustainable at no extra cost.

Educate and inspire

It’s important to us that people have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about the products they are using and the impacts that they may have on key factors, such as their health. Many people don’t even know about the toxic chemicals and microplastics that may be in the pads they currently use. Currently in the UK period products are completely unregulated, which is something we want to fight to change. However, this means that major brands can cut corners and avoid disclosing their ingredients, leading to poor quality products. We want to empower menstruators with the option to choose safer alternatives, with transparent ingredient lists and proper certifications.

Mental health

We understand that menstruation often sucks and can result in periods of low mental health. Experiences such as changing your pad, feeling unclean, worrying about discretion, leaking, forgetting a pad or getting caught out and purchasing products can be a huge mental burden. We know that having your period, particularly for young people, can be super stressful, uncomfortable and irritating. We also find it doesn’t help that most pad brands are scratchy, noisy and indiscreetly packaged in aggressively fluorescent plastic. Through our branding and packaging we hope to soothe our users’ mental states and boost their self-esteem. We also aim to cultivate positive feelings by making people feel part of our caring community and through encouraging small acts of kindness with our ‘pass on pads’ donation scheme, where customers can gift and be gifted pads to and from strangers.

Wow, sorry for the long read, but hopefully you now know more about our mission and the change we want to make in the world. If you support any of our work, please consider making a donation to us. At this stage we really need startup capital to get our business off the ground before it is able to become financially self-sustaining. Thank you so much for taking the time to care about what we care about, please stick around for more content if it tickles your fancy.