Columbus City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown likens menstruation products to toilet paper.

Most public restrooms don’t have tampons and sanitary pads, but they all have toilet paper. She wants that to change at city recreation centers.

The city started a pilot program to provide the products at four recreation centers in December, Brown said. The pilot was successful, she said, and the city now plans to extend the program to all 29 recreation centers.

Brown plans to announce the expanded initiative on Wednesday along with a donation from Lola, a tampon company, to the Community Shelter Board to provide productsf for homeless women.

“We think of this as an issue that only affects developing countries and the complete dearth of menstrual products there,” she said. “It affects people in our communities every day.”

The pilot at the Douglas, Driving Park, Glenwood and Linden recreation centers has cost about $2,000 so far, including new dispensers. The city is purchasing the products on its sanitary paper products contract, which was bid last year, as needed. The city expects to spend about $170,000 a year on paper products.

Brown said the cost to provide tampons and sanitary pads is relatively low and that the products will not be the highest quality.

“You don’t get Charmin Ultra in a public bathroom. It’s very economical,” she said. “When people are looking at taking a fine comb to their budgets they don’t consider cutting out toilet paper. Paper products in bathrooms are not exorbitantly expensive.”

Cities, states, colleges and public school systems around the country increasingly are considering whether to offer the products in public bathrooms, said Nancy Kramer, founder of Columbus-based Free the Tampons, a national campaign whose nonprofit foundation status is pending.

Kramer gave a TedTalk about the movement to provide the products for free in public bathrooms in late 2013, and she said it has taken off since then.

They are available inside bathrooms in the John Glenn Columbus International Airport and several Columbus businesses, she said. New York’s public school system, prisons and shelters started offering the products after the city council passed bills requiring them last summer.

“Toilet paper is there to tend to our normal bodily functions in a public restroom. That’s become our society-accepted norm state,” Kramer said. “I believe if everyone menstruated, these items would be available like toilet paper.”

Brown said she hopes the city program will grow.

“We believe this is a starting point and want to find more ways to make tampons and pads freely accessible,” she said.

rrouan@dispatch.com

@RickRouan