Plastic, Periods, and What Nobody's Testing: A Conversation with GladRags
A conversation with Sara Tunstall and Abby Malzon of GladRags and Spooltown, part of the Plants Over Plastics Collective, our Plastic-Free July interview series.
Sara Tunstall and Abby Malzon never set out to run a menstrual care product company.
They owned Spooltown, a Portland sewing factory they've run since 2011. Brands that manufacture domestically tend to start by sewing from home and with a little demand, quickly outgrow it, yet the larger cut and sews in America carry minimums far beyond a small brand's reach. We at KOOSHOO learned this firsthand over seven years of manufacturing in Los Angeles where minimums constantly threatened our cashflow survival. Spooltown was built to serve that gap (wish we had met them in 2012 when we were starting out), offering domestic production with accessible minimums, and that makes it a vital cog in the effort to repatriate American textile manufacturing at a time when so many brands would otherwise be lured overseas.
GladRags, the 36-year-old cloth pad brand, was their second regular client. For thirteen years, Sara, Abby, and their team sewed pads for the menstrual care business. So when the previous owner, worn tired by the pandemic years, announced she'd rather close GladRags than sell it, the two of them looked at a brand their own hands had helped build, stitch by stitch, and decided its story wasn't finished. They bought it.
We invited Sara and Abby onto our Plants Over Plastics interview series to talk about the role plastics play in the menstrual care industry, and what's in it for the user who chooses plastic-free. We knew the category had problems. What we learned is just how far the gaps in research and regulation actually go.
Watch the entire episode below, or in bite-sized clips on our Instagram feed.
A cloth diaper, a lightbulb moment
GladRags began the way a lot of good ideas do, with someone noticing an inconsistency in her own life. The brand's founder was cloth diapering her kids in the late 1980s and asked herself a fair question. If reusable cotton was the standard of care she'd chosen for her children, why was she still buying disposable menstrual care products for herself?
The market's answer at the time was that nobody had made it easy. So she did.
Thirty-six years later, the product is essentially unchanged. Two pieces of cotton flannel, a layer of terry cloth, a snap. That's the entire ingredient deck. A complete ingredient deck turns out to be a rarer thing in this category than it has any right to be.
So what's actually in a conventional pad?
Most people don't realize that a conventional disposable pad is largely a plastic product. The soft top sheet, the leak-proof backing, the adhesive wings, the wrapper. Synthetic materials worn against one of the most absorbent areas of the body, then thrown away after a few hours, month after month, for decades.
And that's just the part manufacturers will tell you about.
"There's a lot of weird stuff in those pads," Sara told us. Fragrances. Gelling agents. Chemical formulations that vary by brand, by manufacturer, sometimes by batch. In 2024, a UC Berkeley-led study tested 30 tampons across 14 brands and found measurable levels of all 16 metals they screened for, including lead and arsenic, in both conventional and certified organic products. The findings prompted an FDA investigation. Researchers are careful to note they haven't yet established whether these metals leach into the body, and that's rather the point. The research is only just beginning to ask questions this basic.
The regulation is no more reassuring. Period underwear isn't classified as a period product under US law. It's a garment, legally speaking, which places it outside FDA oversight entirely. Pads and tampons are regulated differently from one another, and overseas manufacturers largely sidestep scrutiny altogether.
"The theory that we have a system that is regulated and someone is protecting us is not actually true," Sara said.
Then there's absorbency. Terms like "super" and "super plus" have no standardized meaning across brands. Tampons are required to measure absorbency, but that testing was historically done with saline. The first study to test absorbency using actual blood was conducted in 2024 at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), just down the road from the GladRags facility in Portland. A product in use for over a century, tested for the first time in 2024 with the substance it exists to absorb.
"We have the same questions our customers do"
Sara and Abby have been meeting with OHSU researchers to map what's known and what's on the horizon. The honest summary is that not much exists yet.
They don't pretend otherwise. "We did not buy this business because we are health experts on menstruation," Sara said. "In a lot of ways, it's kind of great, because Abby and I have the same questions any of our customers would have."
Readers of our conversation with Plastic Pollution Coalition about microplastics in the human body will recognize the pattern. In under-researched categories, the trustworthy voices are the ones willing to say "we don't know yet, and here's how we're finding out." GladRags customers seem to agree. Sara and Abby describe a community that reads past marketing claims and asks for certifications, sources, and evidence.
On the question of what's in a GladRags pad, they can give the shortest answer in the industry. Cotton - plus a line made of organic cotton for those that prefer.
No shareholders, no growth mandate
GladRags and Spooltown together are a genuinely small operation. Four people on the GladRags side. Customer service questions occasionally answered from the bleachers of a gymnastics meet (we've definitely been there). One 4:44am phone call that turned out to be an East Coast customer who'd been given Sara's personal cell number and was calling at what was, in her defence, a more civilized hour in her timezone.
There's no private equity behind the curtain and no quarterly targets to hit. "No secret money room in the back," as Sara put it, with someone pulling levers.
The tradeoff is pace - and peace of mind. Their ideas outrun their budget, and the photo shoots they dream about, the ones that could shift how people talk about periods, will more likely launch as a few phone photos posted when there's a spare hour. We know this tension well. Small, values-led brands trade speed for integrity every day, and while we all wish we could launch every product and photoshoot we know the market would love, most of our time and money keeps going to our core products and making them the best value for money in the market.
What the slow lane buys is customers who share similar values. Finding a period product that truly works can take years - decades, even - of trial and error, and once someone lands on one they understand and trust, they hold onto it. Sometimes for forever. More on that in a moment.
The cost question, honestly
Sara shared some eye-opening facts about inequality in this essential space. One in three low-income people in the United States has missed school or work for lack of access to period products. Two in five Americans report struggling to afford them. And over the past five years, period product prices have risen 40%.
Cloth pads cost more upfront, and Sara doesn't dance around it. But the arithmetic shifts quickly over time. Within the five-year guarantee window, GladRags works out cheaper than even the lowest-cost disposable option, and customers routinely use theirs for 20 years. Some keep them well past menopause for light incontinence.
And we're talking just dollars and cents in terms of cost comparison. Costs to the planet, your health, and the economy of the plastics menstrual care industry are incalculable.
The one-word ingredient list
Near the end of the conversation, we asked Sara and Abby what they'd want the menstrual care industry to look like in the future. Their wishlist was modest and specific.
- No one missing school for lack of supplies.
- Free period products in schools.
- Open conversation about what's normal for a body and what isn't.
And products simple enough to explain in one word.
Cotton.
Visit GladRags.com to shop their beautiful products, and be sure to check out their resources while you're there as there is a wealth of information available. Be sure to also follow them at @gladragspads on Instagram.
This interview is part of the Plants Over Plastics Collective, KOOSHOO's Plastic-Free July series. New episodes drop throughout July. Follow along at @feelingkooshoo on Instagram.