TIME has named Egal Pads on a Roll one of the 2025 Best Inventions in the Health and Wellness category. Last month, Fast Company also named Egal an honoree in its 2025 Innovation by Design Awards in the “On the Rise” category, which applauds disruptive companies founded in the past four years. Egal is transforming public restrooms through its in-stall period Pads on a Roll.

Egal’s flagship product mimics a toilet paper roll, placing sanitary, tear-off menstrual pads within reach in public bathroom stalls, as opposed to old-fashioned vending machines by the sink, which are frequently empty and broken.

“Periods are just a natural part of life that require accessible solutions in the restroom,” Egal CEO Penelope Finnie says. “We don’t carry toilet paper around with us. Egal’s solution puts pads right where they are needed.”

To date, 2000 schools worldwide have installed Egal pads as well as airports, library districts, medical facilities, detention centers, gyms, stadiums and even portable toilets.

In 2019, Egal Pads inventor and co-founder Tom Devlin was working with absorbent materials on rolls and heard a quote by an activist saying, “pads should be as common as toilet paper.”

“I thought, ‘Why not just make them like toilet paper?'” says Devlin, who patented the idea. “I couldn’t believe that no one was doing this already.”

Egal’s tightly wound tear-off pads only require one-fifth of the packaging and materials of vending machine products, reducing waste and transportation costs. The rolls are much easier to stock than vending machine supplies, which must be reloaded one product at a time, and sometimes require an outside contractor to refill.

“The simplicity of the solution relieves the financial and logistical burden for an institution,” says Finnie. “Providing free period products in public bathrooms makes it less of a luxury and more of a no-brainer to accommodate guests.”

After trying out Egal pads in its employee restrooms, Denver International Airport quickly added the pads to every family and women’s restroom. Global demand for Egal took off as major conglomerates—including dNATA’s services in hundreds of additional airports and Serco’s justice and immigration services—piloted the solution.

“Egal means ‘equal,'” Finnie says. “For the 26% of the world who menstruate, this provision means new peace of mind that public bathrooms haven’t provided until now. And as we move forward, we applaud all the businesses and governments that are prioritizing women’s needs and putting a smart solution within reach.”