Have you heard about the innovative program Recycle Your Mat? It’s a Eugene, Oregon-based company founded by Stephanie Stano whose goal is to keep yoga mats out of landfills. The idea works in one of two ways. In way #1, you pack up and send your old, out-of-use yoga mat to Recycle Your Yoga Mat, who will either ‘upcycle’ it (convert it into another product) or donate it to local community programs. In way #2, you drop your yoga mat off at a Recycle Your Mat location in your area (generally a yoga studio affiliated with the program), and that location will take care of sending your yoga mat off to be recycled. Recycle Your Mat’s goal for 2009 is to collect 1 million yoga mats. How frickin’ cool is that?
There are, of course, other ideas out there for making productive use of an ‘expired’ yoga mat – like the list of 25 ways to re-use your old yoga mat that we posted here on our blog back in 2007. But if none of these ‘re-use’ ideas appeal to you, you should consider giving your mat to Recycle Your Mat! And if you are connected in some way to a yoga studio, you might want to consider volunteering your business as a drop-off location for this cool program.
There are a few potential issues with Recycle Your Mat which might need to be ironed out before the company can truly ‘go big’. One issue is that the “Drop Off Your Mat” section on their website currently lists a total of zero drop-off locations. A note on the site reads “We are still working on this the [sic] location feature. Check back soon.” Once this section of the website is up-to-date, it will be a cinch for people to find their local drop-off spot and take their mat in. Another issue is the whole hassle-and-cost-of-shipping problem. Recycling one’s mat is a wonderful idea, but will people truly take the time out of their schedules to package up their mats and pay to send them in? We’re sure that many yogis will happily do so, but will enough people motivate to make a real difference? And if a million people do give their yoga mats to Recycle Your Mat in 2009 (which is the program’s aspiration), will the positive environmental effects of a million recycled mats outweigh the negative carbon footprint created by the shipping of a million mats?
These are questions for someone more educated in such matters than ourselves. If you happen to possess some insight that you could offer here, feel free to let us know by leaving a comment! Until then, we applaud Recycle Your Mat for their creative idea and noble intentions. :)
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