Recycle Your Yoga Mat Program

Some 18 million people are now practicing yoga in the U.S. (well, some more regularly than others) and that means that there are a whole bunch of used yoga mats out there. Just as runners need to replace their running shoes every now and then, so do yogis need to replace their mats. So, what happens to all these unwanted mats?

Until now, perhaps nothing except for seeing the bottom of a trash bin. That is, until Stephanie Stano launched “Recycle Your Mat”, a clearing house for used yoga mats which sorts and processes mats for manufacturer re-use.

The nascent Recycle Your Mat program keeps mats out of the landfill through recycling AND helps save virgin materials from harvest by providing manufacturers with recycled materials.

“I wanted to create a system that magnifies the sum of our efforts”, says Recycle Your Mat Founder, Stephanie Stano. “Together yogis can make great change in the consumer marketplace by recycling their mats en mass to be used in new product life cycles”.

Recycle Your Mat collects mats from individuals and yoga studios. Individuals can recycle their mats by dropping them off at a participating Recycle Your Mat location, or by mailing their mat directly to Recycle Your Mat. Studios can send mats directly to Recycle Your Mat.

The process of recycling is more about organization than procedure. The mats are received pre-washed by individuals, studios or fitness centers and once received by Recycle Your Mat, they are sorted by content, color and other discernable factors. At this time, Recycle Your Mat customers process the mats as needed. Most simply cut the mats to fit their end use.

“It seems that we’ve tapped into a need many people have with regard to environmentally friendly yoga mat disposal”, says Stano “We’re very happy to give something back to the practice of yoga that has given us so much.”

For more information about recycling your mat, participating locations and other information regarding yoga mat recycling please visit www.recycleyourmat.com.