The pressure is particularly acute in India, a small but highly promising market for makers of sanitary products where the government is increasingly cracking down on waste. Diaper and sanitary pad makers are grappling with scrutiny elsewhere too amid rising concerns about single-use plastic. The European Union, by 2021, will require labels for sanitary pads describing recommended disposal and their negative environmental impact. The Canadian province of Ontario is seeking public comment on whether diapers and sanitary waste should be banned from landfills. And the Pacific island of Vanuatu will from December ban children’s disposable diapers. In India, the runway for growth is huge. Most women still use washable cloth every month, but the market for sanitary pads is projected to double between 2018 and 2023, according to Euromonitor. That is compared with 0.8% growth in the U.S. The market for diapers is projected to grow 59% in India compared with 2.5% in the U.S. P&G dominates India’s sanitary market with its Whisper brand. It has convinced millions of Indian women to switch to disposable pads, through television advertising and education programs in schools. The country is among P&G’s fast growing markets, and about 20% of women there now use disposable pads, up from 11% eight years ago, according to brokerage Motilal Oswal. But as the market has grown, so has the waste from it. In the U.S., sanitary pads and diapers are bagged with other trash to be sent to tightly controlled landfills or incinerators. In India, much of this waste lies in open dumps or is buried in the ground, posing health risks. Many women discard used pads in rivers or put them in toilets, contaminating water supplies or causing sewage to back up. India also uses a network of waste pickers who trawl through trash looking for recyclables. In recent years, they increasingly have come into direct contact with used diapers and sanitary pads, which pose health risks. “Sanitary waste disposal has become an increasing problem in India,” the country’s Central Pollution Control Board wrote in guidelines last year for how such waste should be managed. Swach, a cooperative for 3,500 waste pickers in the city of Pune, has for years tried to encourage women to make sanitary waste identifiable by wrapping used pads in newspaper marked with a red dot. It sent bags of used sanitary pads to the Indian headquarters of P&G and Johnson & Johnson , which owns the Stayfree brand, in 2013 after it says repeated requests for the companies to provide or subsidize disposal wrappers elicited no response. In 2016, the government published rules requiring companies to provide disposal wrappers for diapers and sanitary pads, pay for waste-management systems and explore recyclable alternatives. Swach and other waste-picker groups say the companies still don’t provide wrappers for some products and that when these are provided they are badly designed, often spilling open. P&G said it provides wrappers with many of its sanitary pads in India and educates consumers about disposal through TV advertising, school programs and on-pack labeling. J&J said it is participating in feasibility studies to help address environmental issues and supporting education programs to foster better user behavior. P&G pledged last year to open a recycling facility in India in 2019, but the effort has stalled. A P&G spokesman said the company doesn’t have a date by which the India recycling facility will open. As a precursor to that facility, a pilot program to assess whether sanitary pads could be collected was meant to start in Pune in January, said Ketaki Ghatge, assistant medical officer at Pune Municipal Corp. It hasn’t because of disagreements about whether the Feminine and Infant Hygiene Association—a trade body representing P&G, J&J and others—or the municipality should pay to transport waste and for workers’ gloves and bags, according to Harshad Barde, a legal consultant at Swach. It is rare for consumer goods companies to run recycling plants, but the practice is slowly starting to catch on as governments crack down on waste generated by everyday products. Collecting big volumes of waste is essential for any recycling effort to be viable. P&G, through a joint venture, operates what it says is the world’s only commercial recycling facility for sanitary pads and diapers in Italy. The site relies on receiving waste that is already collected separately by the government. Waste is steamed at high pressure and temperature to remove pathogens. The raw material can then be used to make things like cardboard, waste bins and underwater cables, although the joint venture is still waiting on government approval to start selling to manufacturers. P&G also is running a trial in Amsterdam to see if households will drop off used diapers in centrally located bins. In India, the companies agreed to pay waste pickers one rupee, or about one U.S. cent, per kilogram of sanitary waste as part of the pilot, Mr. Barde said. “They say they can’t afford more because there’s no market for recyclable material yet,” he said. Waste pickers, he added, have little incentive to collect sanitary waste and keep it separate to other trash for such low returns, while the logistics of tracking and weighing such waste cost more than the companies are offering. Representatives for the hygiene association didn’t respond to requests for comment on cost. Write to Saabira Chaudhuri at saabira.chaudhuri@wsj.com Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. 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Procter & Gamble (P&G) is under pressure to deal with waste caused by its nappies and sanitary products. Concern is particularly acute in India, where the market for sanitary pads is expected to double 2016, compared with 0.8% growth in the US. P&G’s Whisper brand dominates the field. The figures for estimated growth in the nappy market in India and the US are 59% and 2.5%, respectively. In between 2018 and 2023, the Indian government published rules requiring firms to help dispose of such items. P&G’s plans for a recycling facility in India have stalled.