Ouch. Women in the UK spend more than £20 million each month on sanitary products. And while it would be lovely if we could get them for free (it's not like it's our choice to menstruate, now is it?) that social innovation is looking pretty unlikely in the near future.
With that in mind, Y! Lifestyle were heartened by the idea that at least some of that huge sum spent on pads, liners and tampons could at least be put to some philanthropic use.
Enter the Halo Initiative.
We turned up to the launch of a mysterious new product line called 'Halo', invite in hand, certainly not expecting to have tampons waved at us (not literally). It turns out Halo is a sanitary range, which is raising money for The Halo Initiative to dish out to three charities with a focus on women.
Buying tampons for a cause - well, it's a start
The Halo range is a variety of tampons, towels and panty liners and 15p from each pack goes straight to charities supported by the Halo Initiative. One of these is the Eve Appeal, which funds research into the five types of gynaecological cancer women are at risk of.
Yep, five. We couldn't name all five, let alone identify the symptoms. Alarmingly women are at risk of vaginal, cervical, vulval, womb and ovarian cancer and information and warning signs about each can be found on The Eve Appeal website.
The money from sales of Halo products will also go to help ageUK and Straight Talking projects aimed at helping women. You can buy a pack from Tesco, so at least some of your panty liner pennies won't go to lining businessmen's pockets and could do help do good instead.
Read more from our Lifestylists blog.