If you have sex, you’ve probably used a pregnancy test at least once in your life—or way more than that. Honestly, some people may be peeing on a stick more times in a year than they call their grandparents. So what if you could flush those pee-covered sticks down the toilet rather than letting them chill in the trash—or, eventually, the landfill? That's the goal of a new biodegradable test that you can just toss in the toilet when you're done.

Pregnancy tests have been pretty standard for the past few decades: They're made of a fiber strip encased in plastic. When you pee on the end of the stick (or place your pee there with a dropper), chemicals in the strip react to the presence of a pregnancy-related hormone and react accordingly. As you can probably guess, all that plastic isn’t great for the environment. And, if you’re testing regularly, you’re just adding to your local landfill.

A new at-home pregnancy test called Lia made entirely of paper is flushable, biodegradable, and just about to hit the market. So, starting next year, you'll be able to get rid of the evidence next time you need to take an emergency test at someone else’s place or just want to test without questions from your roommate.

“Single-use diagnostics are only used for a few minutes and then discarded,” Lia co-founder and CEO Bethany Edwards tells SELF. “The plastic housings end up in landfills where their life extends well beyond the product’s extremely short use lifecycle.” That’s why she says it was so important to her and her co-founder Anna Courturier Simpson to create something that’s flushable, biodegradable, and uses no plastic.

Plus, being able to keep things on the DL is nice. “Our research shows that many women value discretion when testing—women who are married and living with in-laws and don’t want them to know that they are trying to get pregnant; women who don’t want their roommates to know they are testing; and even women trying get pregnant that don’t want negative tests in the trash as reminders of their struggles to conceive,” Edwards says.

Given that many people toss their used pregnancy tests in the bathroom garbage can—rather than the recycling—there are a lot of these just hanging out in landfills. "It would take hundreds of years to degrade," Linda Tseng, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental studies and physics at Colgate University, tells SELF. "It won't be effectively degraded in our lifetime."

More than 10 million Americans have used a home pregnancy test in 2017, according to calculations from Statista based on data from the U.S. Census and the Simmons National Consumer Survey. And while we don't know how many of those are recycled, it's safe to say that most are tossed in the trash. Bottom line: You're probably not doing the environment any favors when you throw away a standard at-home pregnancy test kit.

When a fertilized egg attaches to your uterine wall, hCG levels quickly increase, Christine Greves, M.D., a board-certified ob/gyn at the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies,

While some at-home pregnancy tests say they can detect a pregnancy up to six days before your missed period, you're really going to get the best results if you take a test the first day of your missed period or even a week later when your hCG levels should be way up, Dr. Greves says. But if you haven't gotten your period and get a negative pregnancy test, she recommends testing again in a week to see what's going on—especially if you have any other early symptoms of pregnancy. If all else fails, your doctor can do a blood test to see whether you are, in fact, pregnant, or run other tests to try to figure out what else might be going on.

Using Lia is pretty similar to other at-home pregnancy tests: You hold the test at an angle and pee on it. Then you wait a few minutes to get your results. If you’re pregnant, you’ll see two lines; If not, you’ll only get one.

According to the company, Lia is 99 percent accurate when it’s taken on the first day of your missed period or after, which is pretty much in line with other products on the market.

And it'll break down pretty quickly: In a biodegradability study conducted by the company, Lia broke down 98.2 percent in three months in conditions that replicate those of a municipal composting service, Edwards says. However, the company isn't sure how Lia would fare in a traditional landfill environment. But the company is currently working on a 12-month biodegradability study in soil to see what happens. You can also toss it in your paper recycling container.

If you flush Lia, it enters the waste water system, just like everything else you flush down the toilet. "In our tests, Lia is proven to biodisintegrate 100 percent under conditions simulating those found in sewers, as well as municipal and onsite wastewater treatment systems," Edwards says. Apparently it has a coating that repels liquids long enough to take the test, but breaks down when it's flushed. Edwards says the company has also added a few different types of perforation that allow water to really tear into it. (You can watch this video to see how the disintegration process compares to traditional toilet paper and flushable wipes.) If you're concerned about old plumbing, you can also tear it up before flushing to make sure it really goes down.

As of this month, the FDA has cleared Lia for pre-market approval, meaning that the agency has determined that it’s “substantially equivalent” to other devices that are on the market. Once it's actually available, Edwards says Lia will be priced similar to existing pregnancy tests, meaning it'll be around $8-10 per test.

It’s hard to tell whether Lia will catch on once it hits the market, and, of course, it's not for everyone. For instance, those who want to hang onto their positive test as a keepsake would have better luck with the traditional plastic variety. But for those women who want an easy, discreet way to figure out what’s going on down there (and then dispose of the evidence), Lia may be the eco-conscious option they're after.