On this week’s episode of Period Story, I had the pleasure of speaking to Ruby Raut, a Nepali-born environmentalist and the co-founder and CEO of WUKA, the UK’s first reusable period underwear brand.
In this episode, Ruby shares:
- How she ended up using reusable period products from her very first period
- The impact of the Nepalese practice of chhaupadi and how she felt treated almost like an untouchable
- How menstrual taboos impacted her education and how she was able to go on to gain a degree in environmental sciences
- Why having access to clean toilets and water can impact your experience of menstruation
- The impact of single use menstrual products in the UK – over 200,000 tons of disposable tampons and pads are sent to UK landfills each year
- How using one pair of period underwear replaces 196 pads or tampons going to the landfill
- Why Wuka supports grassroots sports and how they got 6,000 girls into sports in 2025
- And of course, the story of her first period
Ruby says that when we talk to young people about periods in a way that is accessible to them, we take the embarrassment out of these conversations.
Thank you, Ruby!
Get in touch with Ruby:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Hi Ruby. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. I’m really excited to speak to you, talk about the work that you do, the amazing products that you make. But first, let’s kick off by getting to the story of your first period.
Ruby Raut: Thank you, Le’Nise, for having me. So I’m Nepali born, so I, I was born in Nepal, uh, and I moved to UK when I was 20 years old. So growing up my period was very different to girls growing up here. Didn’t have many choices around period products, so basically like how we do generationally, whatever your mother used, you ended up using the same product, right?
So my mum handed me her oldest sari cut into small pieces. That’s what my sister used. It was totally normal for me to get that. But first period, what she told me was like, I cannot be staying at my home. So she told me that I have to go and stay at my aunt’s house. And in the beginning I genuinely felt like I was just going to my cousin’s house and just having a seven days off and just playing with them and then the reality I think struck quite hard when I reached there, they very much had like this isolated place arranged for me. Small room, bed on the floor. Cup, bowl, plate, separated. And I think I found it very strange when people started passing me food on the floor rather than on my hand and almost treat you as like you are an untouchable.
And I knew very little about the whole cultural side of the thing. Um, I hadn’t seen, my mum go through it, so I had no idea. I had my two sister before me, but when they had their period, my, my dad was not around, so I never got to experience that as well. So that seven days was like, very much like life changing.
I went home and I was like, why would you put your own daughter through all of this? You know? It just, just, I, I just wanted to be around family and everybody was away at that time. Little did I know that that was just the beginning of it. For me the biggest challenge was in school. We did not have proper toilet, proper water facilities, changing facilities.
So even now when somebody says like, oh, I want to do some work in Nepal or anything, I always say like, please, can you make sure that there’s toilet, a proper toilet facilities, but also like closer to the school and not like, I don’t know, 500 meters away from the school that girls don’t feel safe and all this kind of things.
I think that really shaped in terms of like what I do now and yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a very strange. For me then the question with the school was, or all around like, because you didn’t have a changing facilities. Once you use your pad, if it gets soaked and basically you don’t have any other changing product to change into, so you just come home and that become a norm to pretty much every girls in my school, we stopped going to school when on period, we stopped doing sports.
So that was the normal part of having period, like you falling behind on everything in life.
Le’Nise Brothers: So this feeling of falling behind, in school and then in sports, you’ve talked a lot about the impact that falling behind in sport has had on you. And I want to touch a little bit on that later because you’ve done some amazing work in that area in your company, but in terms of falling behind in school, so missing, let’s say five days of school every menstrual month, you then went on to become an environmental scientist. So how did you bridge that gap?
Ruby Raut: I, I did my A level in Nepal and then moved here when I was 20. And it was not easy.
I started doing social sciences. In the beginning I was doing health and social care and, and I found the whole care sector was like very difficult. I did not grow up with like many grandparents living in the house, so I, it was like very hard to empathise with people living with like elderly people living here and the care and stuff.
So I just moved away straight away from there to doing environmental science and I had a bit of a break. So I graduated quite late. I was 26 by the time I graduated. I had a bit of a break in my career and when I did environmental science, I think that really changed me how I see world.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Ruby Raut: Even now David Attenborough was like my, like literally the teacher. We, we studied everything that he talked about planet Earth. And when I graduated I just came out to see like, okay, if there is one thing I would like to change is like, change in the attitude of people around environment. About the food that we eat.
Where does it come from? Are people really aware about it? The clothes that we wear? Why, why is there plastic everywhere? Um, so I started going to school talking about sustainability. I ran this project called Food Waste Ninja. I was teaching kids not to throw food away because it comes from so many miles away and so much of hardship and labor and all this kind of thing, and still 50% of the food gets wasted.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow.
Ruby Raut: Of with that 30% that actually gets wasted in the source before they’re actually driven. So that was like such an eye-opening for me. But when I started going to school, then I was volunteering at Women’s Environmental Network at that time, and I said like, oh, I’m going to school talking about sustainability.
Is there anything else I can cover? And then they talked about periods and period product. Because they had this campaign 20 years ago around chemicals, around period and pesticides, uh, in cotton, et cetera. But we hadn’t done much on reusable, so I shared them my story of like growing up with reusable sari.
So they thought that, okay, you are the perfect person to go and talk to them. Went with like, like reusable pads and everything to shoWukase to the girls, and the first thing the girls were like, oh no, we are not going to wear this. It was like such a mindset change because you’re so used to seeing a shiny packet with a shiny product, you know, like, and then you make some, you take like some homemade product.
Le’Nise Brothers: Hmm.
Ruby Raut: Um, so I think that, that day I definitely learned a, a big lesson. If there was any sustainable product to come into the market, it had to be as good as those shiny boxes and shiny product. It has to look aesthetically good and do the job. So on the way back home from there, I got a secondhand sewing machine and put a YouTube on and learn how to sew.
And, but this time, like my mum’s, rather than my mum’s, sorry, I put my husband’s t-shirt and stitched the pad in the underwear. And I made like three pair of underwear like that for myself, wore for around six months. And I, and every time I looked forward to having my period, I genuinely do. And I still, I do, if you, if you see any customer who uses period underwear, they always go like, I’m actually looking forward to my period.
And I think that’s the attitude shift
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Ruby Raut: Of like taking your period as a positive outcome rather than, oh, period sucks kind of thing. So yeah that’s the beginning of how I started Wuka.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. I want to just take a step back a bit and talk more about the cultural side of your early days of having a period, because the taboos around menstruation really interest me.
And I actually talked about the Nepalese practice. I know I’m going to get the pronunciation of this wrong: chhaupadi?
Ruby Raut: Yes, yes, yes.
Le’Nise Brothers: In my book and how it’s now been made illegal, but it’s still, it still happens. Thinking about what you experienced, in the early days of having your period and the way that you now experience your period now in the UK, can you talk a little bit about the differences in the menstrual conversation between the UK and in Nepal.
Ruby Raut: Yeah. So I, I’ll tell you a little bit background of like why people started practicing chhaupadi as it was. So during my great-great grandmother time, they didn’t have period product, they didn’t have underwear. I mean, even my mum generation did not wear underwear growing up.
So you can see like how far we have come in terms of life. This generation shift. So whenever my great-grandmother used to have period, she used to walk around the house. Obviously without having an underwear and anything like that, there used to be blood dripping on the floor. So my grandfather and everybody in the family said like, just, just go and sit over there.
You don’t have to worry about it. And what they used to do was like, they used to tuck the sari inside the leg and then they just sit in one place. And at that time, you know, generation, they embraced it because that was the four day that they would get it as a break from all the family household chores and everything, so they embraced it.
But over the years we had underwear come out. We had like reusable pad that the parents used to make. We used to have the string that the pad used to hang around it as well. So, so a lot of like improvement happened, but that culture of like still sitting away still existed. And I think in some part of Nepal, I think people, people enjoy that because that is a breakdown from your old household chores and all this kind of thing. But I think in cities, things have moved on a lot. So girls, women are working outside jobs, you know, moving about, doing sports, all sorts of things. So things have changed quite a bit. We still have this very ingrained cultural nuances about the, the fact that you can’t go to temple, the fact that you can’t go to wedding and funeral.
That is going to be a very hard one to shift, I would say, because it’s very much when people put a fear of God in you, that is one of the hardest fear to take it out and it’s very patriarchal to society kind of thing to do. It’s changing. I say it’s changing, but it’s not in Kathmandu even if you go now.
The women won’t go to temple. The women won’t go to wedding. The women won’t put tika when they’re on the period. And when you ask them why they generally don’t have any answer. It’s because what my grandmother told or what my mother told. That’s literally what we are following. And I think what I see moving to West is like, there’s no barrier of that.
You can’t do anything on your period. And I think with the global, social media is like the main point. Like people see what things are happening in different parts of the world. I think that will change. Hopefully the new generation will see that actually it’s okay to be on your period and still go to temple and nothing’s going to happen actually.
So I think it’s, it’s about time we take that fear out. Um, one of the thing I had fear when I was growing up was if I hung my sari rag outside in the sun and somebody picks it up. And burns it with some kind of spell that I will not be a mother for my entire life.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow.
Ruby Raut: So there’s that, that’s such a, such extreme taboo, you know, like put it in your head that then you’d never put, never hang your, sari outside.
You always make sure that it’s covered by something else. And uh, obviously that leads to a series of different kind of problem in women’s health. It’s an attitude and mind, mind change. I think with people in Nepal now, to be able to see what’s happening in around the world through social, through the global platform.
I think things will change. Still there is this still very much my mother’s nagging me in my head is still going on, you know?
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Ruby Raut: So hopefully my generation then I might tell my kids like, actually, it’s okay. I have done it. Been there, nothing happens. You can carry on. Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.
It’s really interesting the effect that the words that our grandparents and, and parents, they have on us and they can just stick in our minds and they affect us all these year, years later. I want to just ask you a question around the toilet. You mentioned about having clean toilets and, and I think that’s a really interesting point when we talk about the difference between the menstrual conversation between the east and the west, where I come back to menstrual hygiene day and inevitably, every year there’s people talking about how it should just be called Menstrual Health Day. And whenever people say that, I think, well, that’s a Western perspective because there are still women and girls and you know, other people who don’t have clean water to wash their pads or their underwear, you know, there is, there’s no access to clean toilets.
And so it’s, uh, even as you mentioned earlier, places to dispose of used pads and tampons. Can you talk a little bit about that side of it? Because I feel like you obviously have a very interesting perspective on that.
Ruby Raut: And you are, you are right. Actually, like I told you about the hygiene thing, why the, why the hygiene came was like that narrative of like, you can’t actually dry your reusable pad on the sun and it needs to be hidden.
That actually creates this whole problem about hygiene issue. The, the, the rags might not dry properly. People might use that same un dried rags. But also sun kills micro bacteria and microorganism, right? Like, so it’s, it’s good to actually dry your clothes in the sun. And when that happens, then there are series of like, health issues.
They might use the same like damp pad again. There was also hygiene issue around like washing and cleaning and using soap and all this kind of thing. And it started in there like, can we have women being more taught around like the hygiene around period?
Le’Nise Brothers: Hmm.
Ruby Raut: But in the, the UK case, it’s not the case because most of us use still single use product. You use it, you put it in the bin, and then the bin is actually a quite closed lid as well. So everything is quite contained. The bin then gets into the, either into landfill or incinerator. It’s quite like nicely tracked kind of way. But when, when you are in Nepal where there is no toilet facilities, no bin facilities, you are throwing a pad hoping that somebody’s going to burn it, but sometimes it end up in the road, sometimes it ends up in the river.
You know, like, so, so I think people are teaching more of the hygiene perspective, like how to contain your product after you use, and I think there is a use of language in different use of language case in different parts of the world that you live in.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Ruby Raut: And, and what you’re prioritising about as, as a part of that movement.
Are you prioritising access to period products or are you trying to say like, actually there are period products that people can use, but we just wanted to teach them more in terms of like how to manage it. And I think that’s where the language comes in, right? In the UK you can talk about health because I think.
Health is the one that we don’t talk about menstrual health in here.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Ruby Raut: We like to hide things. We gossip about things or we whisper things. And I think that’s where the, the whole health part comes is like, we gotta talk about period health, because there are hormones at play.
There are so many things at play that governs us, right. Like, so I think different places, different language. You are absolutely right.
Le’Nise Brothers: You mentioned the use of single use products in the UK. The environmental impact of menstruation is huge, and you, there’s a stat that you have on your website where over more than 200,000 tons of disposable tampons and pads are sent to landfills in the UK.
And then you add on top the impact of the chemicals and the plastics that are used to make these products. Your company is really interesting. So moving on to just talk about that side of Wuka where, you started with reusable period underwear and there’s a really big conversation that I’ve seen over the last couple of years where people are now starting to become more aware of not just the chemicals and tampons and pads, but also the chemicals that can be present in period underwear and reusable period products like that. Can you talk a little bit about that side of it?
Ruby Raut: Yeah. Period underwear has been in the world for 10 years, max, like a decade compared to like, disposable product, like a hundred years. And then I think the whole news came around like the PFAS around you know, whenever this study comes, I always say like find the source of information where they’re coming from ’cause even last year, the whole chemical in the tampons and pads and I think when you dig a little bit deeper, the amount, what is present a, does it really affect the human being? Are we getting those PFAS from other sources as well?
Like the water, the non-stick pan that we eat from, you know, like that is, it’s full coated with like PFAS and everything and forever chemicals. I think it’s really good to understand. But there’s also a significant difference between disposable and reusable, right? So every reusable underwear, whether that’s ours, with any period underwear, or even cup, every time that you use, you will replace so many disposable using in your lifetime. With our period underwear, with one underwear, you will replace 196 pads or tampons going up to the landfill. So in, in a lifetime, that is huge amount of waste going to landfill, all being burned. And I think that is like one part, you can’t get it all right.
But I think that that making that first step towards like conscious living is, I think that’s the best way. And then I always say, check the source. Make brands feel liable if they’re not right. You need to write to the brands and say like, okay, if you’ve done test, show us the test. If you have done this research, if your product does not contain this, please share us more information on it.
And something that as a transparent kind of brand, like it’s a product that I use. If I feel like the product is going to be harmful to me, why would I sell it? Right? So, and I think it’s that taking that ownership of your brand. And I’m the face of it. I’m quite visible, you know, like, you come and talk to me and I’ll listen to you.
And I think that is what we need as like a consumer from every brand. The chemical in the tampons and pads that came out. Nobody knows where that chemical came from because the producer are saying like, we didn’t add in. But then there are like other sources, like the groundwater going up to grow the cotton. did it get transferred there? You know, you make these pads in like huge machineries and stuff. Like did the machines actually transfer some of the heavy metals into the pad and stuff as well? Like, so I think it is a fear mongering kind of way. Like sometimes when it comes, it becomes like, oh my God, like am I putting so much chemical?
But I think it’s good to understand where all of these news comes from and how much, what level is safe level versus what level is like, actually, you know, really you think. Reusable are a hundred percent better than disposable period product. Make brands feel accountable. If you hear something just go and talk to them and ask them like i’ve heard this. What is your response on this? And you know, like if brands are feeling responsible and take the ownership, they will come and speak to you.
Le’Nise Brothers: And I think it’s also this new understanding of the absorbency of the vagina.
Ruby Raut: Yes.
Le’Nise Brothers: So what you put in the vagina and near the vulva, that skin is so, is so absorbent.
Ruby Raut: Yes.
Le’Nise Brothers: And that’s this understanding that we do need to take a little bit more care of, what we put near that part of our body. And also like the skin and like the white
Ruby Raut: The face and lips.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Ruby Raut: Everything, right? Yeah. Like, because they’re like more closer to your mouth and ingestion and all. I always say I’ve got , a teenage niece, and I always say like, please make sure you, whatever you put in lipstick, just check what you’re putting in.
Okay. Just, just because it’s glossy and it does not, I don’t know, erase and all this kind of thing. It does not mean it’s a good thing, you know?
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Ruby Raut: You need to know, because that’s the lipstick that you put, you are actually are eating that .
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, and I think the, the shift towards reusable products is interesting.
Obviously there are still so many people still using disposables, but even though they are competitors, it must be heartening to see the likes of M&S selling period underwear, Primark selling, Uniqlo selling period underwear making these products more accessible. I remember even like, say like five, six years ago, you’d have to go online to, to get these things and it was something that was seen as quite specialist.
But now your company, so your period underwear are available in in Boots.
Ruby Raut: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Which is amazing.
Ruby Raut: It’s you know, when M&S launched, I think we saw, uh, the biggest growth that year because, and then you can see the ripple effect of like when some household brand, like one in three underwear that is worn in the British families are from M&S by the way, you did not know. It’s like, they’re like huge, right? Like, I mean incredible, especially on the underwear kind of category. So when they launched it, it was just like this halo effect. Like it, they made period underwear mainstream. It used to be like a, such a niche. Only if you are like well educated or you are tech savvy on your phone all the time, then you would get advertised from us.
But if we are offline, you wouldn’t know. And I think that is what had changed over the last seven, eight years that we’ve been running is like period is like period on the way is like a normal thing. And I think last two years we have seen this huge rise in young people using period underwear more than like 35 to 45-year-old because they are the non-habit people. Right. They haven’t had a habit of using any products. Mm-hmm. So they’re like easily persuaded to use a product that they haven’t set in habit. Whereas like if you go to 25 to 35 year olds, the first year, 10 years have been just pads and tampons, what they have used and, and why change something when it’s working for most of the people, right?
Like, but then there are like people who have got endometriosis, people who have got PCOS, who’ve got like heavy bleeding. You also have people who post baby, they don’t want to use tampons anymore, right?
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Ruby Raut: Like, so I think those are the switch moments for many of our customer who come to us because either the product that they’re using currently is not working for them, or they’re looking for better comfortable solution. Period underwear is a hundred times comfortable than using pads and tampons. And so either they, there’d be like comfort for sleeping, or comfort for like long days of work, those kind of things.
So I think there are moments for people to switch, but where we are seeing the biggest shift is the young people and the mindset and then in sports and stuff.
Le’Nise Brothers: It’s so interesting. Now just speaking of sport, I am a massive football fan. Arsenal is my club, if you want to know,
Ruby Raut: They are our local club as well, actually.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. So we how you have brands like Flo and Modi Bodi working with women’s football teams and seeing like, I think it’s Chelsea, they have Flo on the back of their shorts, and then also at Arsenal matches, you have Persil doing specific messaging around periods bloodstains, that appears on the, the sponsorship boards along around the pitch. You would’ve never seen that 10 years ago. Well firstly, I think you should speak to Arsenal since they’re your local club.
Ruby Raut: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: But it just speaks to how the conversation has moved on. And just talking about what I mentioned earlier about the work that you’re now doing in sport, can you say a little bit more about that?
Ruby Raut: So, um, started like three years ago actually, and then we have been working behind the scene. We don’t actually work with big teams. We only work with grassroots teams.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Ruby Raut: What we found out was, uh, in the big teams, you have got money. Somebody can buy a period product and stuff. When a club is run by volunteers and all they want is young girls to stay active and not drop out of sports, that’s where you see the biggest fallout.
When you support a grassroots team, basically the chances of them then staying in the sports is much higher. And in general health, I’m not talking about they have to be a competitive, uh, sports player when they go further down the line, but just to be healthy and happy body kind of way, that is the way that we wanted to break that barrier is that one in two girls drop out of sports because of the period. And this does not happen at the club level. This happens at the grassroots level. At the school level. At the PE level, right? Like so that’s what we are trying to address. And I think three years ago when Watford Football Club and they wanted to do just this as like, um. A community kind of project.
They were the first one to actually put ever any period underwear period, product brand logo in the shorts. Watford girls football team. We’re talking about like two, three years back. And now it has become almost like a movement for any other brands to do it. And for us is like, that is the most important thing.
This year we have got 6,000 girls in sports. Because we supply everybody to, uh, a period underwear, but also we have a two education program that one a, um, we do virtual and then the other one is we do in person and then we do it so that I want every young girl to see period as like , very cool subject to talk about, a cool brand at the heart of it that makes absolutely everything normal.
That’s what I want them to see, what period is like in 10 years time. I learned about hormones when I was 30 years old. Mm. I don’t want anybody to reach to 30 years old to figure it out, like why, what’s happening with their body. And I think that’s, that happens quite early, young, on and we not only sponsor football, we have got like TaeKwonDo, gymnast, netball, handball, like you name it, swim. I mean the whole entire swim category is like such a big one as well for us. We do period pool parties in summer, you know, like we go to like, like leisure center and we throw like big party where girls can come and learn about periods.
We do treasure hunt inside the water just to create a safe space for Parents to talk about periods and for the girls to talk about period and, and again, see period as a cool thing. Like, eh it’s normal. You know, like we had a period pool party. Like, I mean, can you imagine like if our old generation had like growing up like this, right?
It would, it would never be a, a conversation of silence. It would be less like I had the best period pool party ever kind of like.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. That’s amazing. I never, I’ve never heard of a period pool party before, but why not? Like how, why not? Yeah. How fun. So you’ve shared a lot today. We’ve talked about the taboos, we’ve talked about the environmental side.
What’s the one thought that you’d love to leave listeners with today?
Ruby Raut: Oh, that’s a interesting one. I want every listener to go and talk to a younger person and make them feel comfortable around period. I think that’s how we are going to change that legacy ’cause if, if you talk with anybody of my age, my parents’ age, and you say like, how was your period? Like everybody will come up with like, oh, I had this, like, I ended up having period on my birthday. Or like my only, my dad was around and he did not know what to do. And you hear this different kind of stories.
Like it was like a such a embarrassing moment or like a terrible moment kind of way. And, and what we want to change is that, that moment to be like non-drama, nothing. I knew everything about my period. I knew that this was going to happen. I was prepared. And that’s where we want to start the conversation, right?
So that when the, by the time these girls become mother, first for thing them is like, actually I’ve sorted my everything for my daughter. Like I’m going to give exactly the same experience I had. Not just with the product, but with the full education around their bodies. And I think that’s what I would say is like anybody listening to it, if you’ve got girls in your life or niece or daughter or anyone, you know, like just make the comfortable conversation around period.
Le’Nise Brothers: I love that. I’m just nodding, nodding so much here. Where can people find you?
Ruby Raut: We are in Tesco, Boots. You can also find us online. Obviously we are DTC first brand, so Wuka.co.uk. That’s Wuka.co.uk. By the way, Wuka also stands for Wake Up Kickass. So basically that’s the attitude I want to live here when I leave.
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much for coming onto the show today, Ruby.
Ruby Raut: Thank you, Le’Nise.