As some of you may know, there's such a thing as reusable menstrual products. (And, no, it is NOT using a tampon more than once.) Usually these come in the form of cloth pads, sponges, or menstrual cups. The only one I've actually paid a lot of attention to is menstrual cups, so that's the one that I'll be discussing here. If you know something about the others, or have noticed a point that I didn't bring up, please feel free to explain them. I am by no means an expert seeing as I haven't gotten to try them yet, but I felt like it was worth trying to bring the topic up.
Menstrual cups are inserted in the same fashion as a tampon, but instead of being made of cotton which can lead to TSS (
Toxic Shock Syndrome), menstrual cups are typically made of silicon or latex which cannot give you TSS. During the part of the month where they are not being used, menstrual cups often stay in a cloth pouch that's often provided when the cup is purchased, though some people prefer to make their own. During the menstruation itself, they are emptied, cleaned, and then reinserted. When it's over, they're boiled so they can be steril. Obviously, as a reusable menstrual product, they aren't thrown away after each use. They're often used for multiple years before being replaced which means less rubbish is ending up in a landfill somewhere, or worse, blocking someone's pipe lines.
People's main concern with menstrual cups is that they often appear huge, though they're not actually any larger than an expanded tampon. In order to insert them, they often have to be
folded. These folds are suppose to allow them to pop out to full size when they're inserted, which allows them to create a vaccume that prevents leaks. A second problem women often have is the length of the cup. This is typically dealt with by cutting the stem of the cup until it's short enough to rest comfortably in the v****a.
A LiveJournal group for Menstrual CupsA comparison between brands 
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