How car share helped Roz combat period poverty

Roz is an industrial designer and founder of the social enterprise TSUNO. She uses Uber Carshare to deliver sanitary products to charities across Melbourne as part of her work combating period poverty with sustainable period products.  

Getting started

Roz’s interest in sustainable period product design started 11 years ago ‌whilst on a trip to Europe.

Faced with getting her period overseas, Roz encountered the menstrual cup, a product not widely available in Australia at the time. After some research, she was surprised to learn that the cup had been available since the 1930s (around the same time as the tampon). This highlighted an opportunity for Roz, who realised that period products hadn’t had a significant redesign since then.

At the same time, Roz was becoming increasingly interested in sustainability, feminism, and learning about period poverty.

Roz shared:

“Girls' education is such an amazing vehicle for alleviating poverty, tackling climate change and improving outcomes for whole communities.

I was interested in a charity called One Girl and when I learnt about their work and how they had realised that when they were sending girls to school, they weren't able to go when they had their period due to a lack of access to affordable menstrual products. This meant girls were missing up to a week of school each month, falling behind in their classes and often dropping out.

This was an eye-opening moment for me and I decided to pull my interest in design, sustainability and feminism together to create Tsuno.”

TSUNO

In 2014 Roz launched TSUNO, a social enterprise dedicated to creating sustainable period products and helping to combat period poverty.

50% of TSUNO’s net profits are donated to charities that help ‌empower women and girls around the world and in Australia. You can check out TSUNO's incredible work here.

Enter Uber Carshare

Roz quickly found that her small car wasn't up to the task of transporting pallets of supplies to charities around Melbourne. She needed access to a van, but as the founder of an emerging social enterprise, she knew that the cost of owning and maintaining a van didn't make sense.

An avid participant in the share economy, Roz discovered Uber Carshare when she was looking for local options for affordable short-term van hire.

“I’m interested in sustainability and new ways of doing things. I saw stickers on cars in my area and became curious about what they were about.”

Roz found that using Uber Carshare gave her the freedom and flexibility to rent local vans when she needed them, minus the trek to a car rental business. It also helps her to keep her costs low.

“Uber Carshare is great. If you need a vehicle for a specific job, you have the pick of 100’s of vehicles. I looked at my costs and found it was about ¼ of what I’d spend on rego if I were to own a van.”

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