“Feminine Waste Only!!!” A History of the UK Sanitary Bin in the Twentieth Century – Technology's Stories (August 2018)
Mørk Røstvik, Camilla (Author)
Technology's Stories
Volume: 6
Issue: 3
Edition Details: Issue Theme: Maintenance
Language: English
Every fortnight one man enters all the women’s toilets at our university, removes and eplaces the sanitary bins, and drives away in a van. Observing this system, I became curious about the grey rectangle with foot-operated pedals, “modesty flaps,” bearing the warning “for feminine waste only”, located in almost every women’s toilet in the UK. The sanitary bin turns out to be a symbol-heavy plastic object in the modern history of waste management and meaning, entangled in changing ideas about the environment, women’s role in the workplace, profit, technology, and bathroom politics.
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