Central Library offering free menstrual products in washrooms

CALGARY — The Calgary Public Library is addressing so-called “period poverty.”

A new pilot project will see free menstrual products placed in the bathrooms of the Central Library downtown.

The library’s director of service delivery Shannon Slater said while it’s not their mandate to do this, it’s one more way to support the community.

“Those menstrual hygiene products are needed every month. They’re not inexpensive and it can also mean that when balancing other individual or family needs, it can really be problematic to have enough money left to purchase those products. And we know that this can have a real detrimental social, emotional, and health cost for individuals in our community,” said Slater.

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The free tampons and pads are only offered at the one location for now but Slater said it could very well be expanded.

“We’ll be looking to see what we can learn about this, monitor usage, see what the need is and figure out some of the logistics and assess how we would roll this out to other locations across the library system.”

The pilot project runs until the end of August.