Adorbsies, a team of three Vietnamese teenagers who won The Earth Prize 2022, a global environmental sustainability competition, vow to improve awareness of menstrual pads in the country where talking about the issue remains somewhat inadmissible.

“We want to make menstrual hygiene products more popular in society as it’s truly a serious issue that deserves the people’s attention,” said the winners of the US$200,000 environmental sustainability competition for teenagers which drew more than 650 teams from 516 schools coming from 114 countries.

Winner of The Earth Prize 2022, from left: Huyen Luong, Dorothy Tran, Uyen Bui. Photo: Linh Pham

Team Adorbsies is made up of pragmatic, business-oriented and highly motivated Vietnamese 10th and 11th graders namely Quynh Anh (Dorothy Tran), Uyen Bui, and Huyen Luong who collaborated on a plan to produce biodegradable sanitary pad “Adorbsy”.

“Feminine napkin has yet received enough care though it’s an issue that matters to medical state and reproductive health,” Adorbsies told The Hanoi Times. “Our idea has resulted from a need for the sanitary towel which is produced from natural materials and affordable for the majority of women, mostly students.”

Thinking of an environmentally friendly and affordable product that is not in sight of anyone has prompted a question on which materials are suitable. Such a thought haunted the mind of the girls for a long time before they decided to apply for a global environment prize which was launched in September 2021.

After Uyen learned about the absorbency of dragon fruit, the team got involved in a plan to explore the absorbent properties of the fruit which is popular and cheap in Vietnam. The idea of making period products out of dragon fruit peels became strong with the support of Uyen’s mom who is a scientist and lecturer at the Hanoi University of Pharmacy. Fiber and pectin from the peels are great elements to form the pads, she shared with The Hanoi Times.

The team got determined to follow the idea when they saw a drop in dragon fruit sales due to the pandemic and expected to do something helpful for local farmers. At that time, considerable amounts of unsold fruit were destroyed due to stagnant consumption.

This planted the seed for their Earth Prize project submission as it would make full use of the dragon fruit peels and largely help change people’s mindset toward sanitary pads and the importance of menstrual hygiene.

Sanitary pads to be produced from dragon fruit. Source: The Earth Foundation

Ready to challenge

The three girls first met at an extra-curricular educational center and became friends despite the fact that Dorothy lives in Ho Chi Minh City while Uyen and Huyen are in Hanoi.

Each of them brought forward their own abilities and interests when they applied for The Earth Prize. Dorothy is a problem solver. She likes any challenge involving large-scale planning and hopes to pursue higher education in business with a special focus on social enterprises. Huyen wants to concentrate on finance, with the hope of starting her own company in the future. Uyen maintains her interest in arts, as a trained classical musician, while still aspiring to a future career in computational biology, as she has always been curious about the intersection between computer science and biology.

These bright young women expressed humility, disclosing that they never expected to reach the final round of the competition. “It is daunting to apply when you come from such a small country,” Dorothy Tran said. But participating in The Earth Prize has rightly boosted their confidence and they stand proud that the quality of their idea speaks for itself.

“It really gives us inspiration. We spent months and months on this idea, and it feels like it is really paying off. The all-nighters, the sleepless nights, looking through dozens and dozens of research papers… it is worth it!”, Huyen Luong said.

“We are all really, really excited because this is our first really big milestone. The Earth Prize is where we wanted to present our idea first, but the actual implementation of our idea will be the next big step, and so, winning this gives us a lot of strength to see where we can take this idea.

This has been such a great learning experience”, said Uyen Bui.

Commenting on the winners, Rina Kupferschmid-Rojas, Chair of the Panel, said: “This was a very difficult choice for The Earth Prize Adjudicating Panel to make, but team Adorbsies’ project is an idea turned into a solution that can make a genuine difference.”

“We are delighted to see how The Earth Prize has become a truly global effort, with participants from, quite literally, all over the world. We are thrilled to have the winning team from Vietnam in the competition. Our wish is that this team inspires many other Vietnamese teenagers to participate next year and bring their brilliant ideas to life,” Founder of The Earth Foundation Peter McGarry told The Hanoi Times.

Through The Earth Prize, students are challenged, mentored, and inspired to make real change by designing their own environmental sustainability projects, products, organizations or enterprises.

After the prize, team Adorbsies has sorted out things to do in the next some years. They had thought of a startup and considered the production with detailed plans on facilities, technical issues, manpower, output, and consumption. To ensure consumption, they would offer free-of-charge menstrual pads to students at universities and female patients in clinics. The survey from trial use would enable them to develop better products, the team shared.

Interestingly, their products will cover other kinds of napkins, including diapers and reused kitchen towels in the next five years with an expansion to dragon fruit growing hubs namely Malaysia and some Latin American countries.

Swiss Ambassador to Vietnam Ivo Sieber at a briefing to laud Adorbsies in Hanoi on April 22. Photo: Embassy of Switzerland in Hanoi

Swiss Ambassador to Vietnam Ivo Sieber lauded the achievement made by three laureates of the first global environmental sustainability competition organized by the Earth Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland. In a briefing at his residence to present the Vietnamese winners of The Earth Prize 2022 to local media on April 22, the ambassador said it’s an honor to have the winners from Vietnam and the wonderful girls deserved the prize for their excellent idea and thoughts, calling them ambitious.

Ambassador Sieber said the idea should receive cooperation from different stakeholders and the Embassy of Switzerland in Hanoi pledged to support the joint efforts to put the plan into practice.  

He said the embassy will extend its support to the girls and their parents on their trip to Switzerland in June 2022 for the award ceremony.