Even though menstrual products are essential healthcare items, millions of girls and women around the world struggle to afford them. Not having period products can force them to miss school or work, harming their health and freedom.

Motivated by this global problem, Eloise Hall and Isobell Marshall, two enthusiastic Australian teenagers, decided to use their gap year after finishing high school in Adelaide to co-found Taboo, a social enterprise tackling period poverty.

After winning several start-up competitions, the positive feedback encouraged the young founders to launch Taboo, a company that sells period products – made from certified organic cotton – in 2019.

Harbingers’ interviewed Eloise Hall to learn first-hand the story behind Taboo. “Wherever there is toilet paper, there should also be period products accessible,” she said.

Unlike profit-driven corporations that prioritise revenue, Taboo champions the social enterprise model – a business that reinvests or donates its profits to create a positive social impact. 

“When I discovered the social enterprise business model, I fell in love with the idea of creating a company that gives back through people’s typical daily consumer behaviour,” Hall told Harbingers’. 

Hall says Taboo’s goal is to help achieve menstrual justice – meaning dignity, liberty and equality for all people who menstruate – by 2030 in Australia. To accomplish this mission, the company dedicates its profits, advocacy efforts and business activities to eradicate period poverty and improve menstrual wellbeing.

Real world impact

One of Taboo’s innovative programmes is Pad It Forward (PIF) in which customers purchase period products on behalf of someone at risk of period poverty.

Later, the Cycle Supply initiative expanded Taboo’s impact well beyond individual product sales, providing access to menstrual products for free in schools, workplaces and other large organisations.

According to Taboo’s May 2025 report, the company has donated 6,744 boxes of products to people at risk of period poverty and partnered with more than 170 schools and workplaces.

“To identify people at risk, we work closely with community partners, such as homelessness and domestic violence services, as well as organisations that look after young people experiencing complex and entrenched disadvantages. These organisations help deliver our products into the right hands,” Hall explained.

Rather than holding rigid standards of what care and support should look like, Taboo’s business plan prioritises responding to community demand, while addressing systematic gaps overlooked by social institutions.

 

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Exploring the intersection of different disadvantages and menstrual health has led the company into new areas of work. 

“Our upcoming projects include building resources for disabled people to understand their menstrual cycle better and working on improving women’s access to period care in prisons,” Hall said. 

Taboo also runs reproductive healthcare-related educational programmes and workshops, reaching 3,200 community members annually.

Their responsive and inclusive education invites men and boys to be part of the conversation, while actively debunking menstrual myths and misconceptions among participants, such as the idea that pads stick directly to women’s bodies. 

Hall thinks that education is a viable way of reducing ignorance and eroding stigma because it helps people to understand what menstruation is like, diminishing their negative associations with the experience. 

Taboo also combats menstrual stigma by rejecting common euphemisms and using explicit language instead.

“In our marketing, we changed our name from ‘Taboo Sanitary Products’ to ‘Taboo Period Products’, because we understood the word ‘sanitary’ kind of implies that periods are not sanitary to start with,” Hall added.

She also emphasised that, to truly create a positive impact in making menstruation less of a taboo topic among Gen Z, schools should also stop using euphemisms or code words for describing periods.

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