Recycling Your Yoga Mat

We all know that Yoga Mats don't last forever. Instead of just throwing them away, there's a number of ways you can recycle your old mats.

Here's a list of ways Nathan and I have re-used our old Yoga Mats:

1. Take them camping and use them as pads underneath your sleeping bags. It makes sleeping on bumpy terrain more comfy! Plus, it may prompt a random Yoga session in the woods!

2. Nathan cut a square off an old Yoga Mat and used it as a pad underneath our cutting board. Now the board stays put on the counter when we use it.

3. We cut small circles off an old Yoga mat and placed them underneath the legs of all the beds, chairs, and dressers in our apartment so we could stop scratching our hardwood floors.

4. Nathan cut large squares out of an old Yoga mat and we now use them as decorative pops of color underneath the wine glasses in our bar.

5. Though I still haven't done this (I need a glue gun!), you can turn your old Yoga Mats into Flip Flops!

6. Our downstairs neighbor gets mad when we walk around the house in shoes (he is a bit of an ornery man!), so we laid down a Maendy Mat on the hardwood floor of one of our highest traffic areas, and since then the complains from downstairs have stopped - and it is hard not to do some Yoga on it every time we pass through the room!

7. We constructed a "cat house" out of an old box for our cat, and put a piece of Yoga mat in the bottom of it, so Beeboo can have a nice comfy place to hang out!

8. Nate is a DJ, and since we live in an apartment, the noise from his spinning records would sometimes get to be a little much for the guy downstairs. So we cut out speaker sized squares of yoga mat and placed them underneath the speakers. This made the sound less unbearable for our neighbors!


I also posted the question of how people recycle their Yoga Mats on Facebook, and here's the great suggestions people made:


www.recycleyourmat.com or i know someone looking for mats for a transitional shelter.
-N. Adler

Humane Society,can also use them! ;)
-S. M. Springer

recycleyourmat.com or your local woman's shelter!!
-J. F. Miletic

http://www.yogamates.co/news/595/
-K. K. Luber

you could cut it in smaller rectangles for extra cushion under the knees or hips.
-L. T. Warren

J. R. Morgan says use it as stair runners. i had a yoga teacher who gave us jam and wrapped each jar with a piece of mat then cut strips and made bows from the same. you could chuck the jar at a wall and it wouldn't break. I've also used them in the barn for horses to stand on. i'm writin a book on this with Bhujangasana (N. Adler)!
-J. Morgan

I folded one to add cushion to a dog crate - then put blankies on top of that.
-M. Bloom


Anyone have any more ideas? Fee free to post them in a comment below!