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Study on the sustainability of the bYo yoga mat
How sustainable is our yoga mat bYo? A thought that has played a decisive role for us from the very beginning. Reason enough for us to have the 100% cork yoga mat examined more closely. The results of the CO₂ footprint made us very proud. But from the beginning.
We come across the word "sustainability" every day, as it plays an increasingly important role in the media, politics and advertising. No wonder: environmental awareness is increasingly turning from an individual lifestyle into a social movement. It is inevitable that companies will declare their products to be "sustainable" - even if this may not be true at all.
When we looked into the topic of yoga mats, we quickly realized how little sustainability is anchored in the yoga scene. We were actually even more negatively surprised by how often mats are praised as "sustainable" that are ultimately not. Reason enough for us to take a closer look. How sustainable is our bYo yoga mat? We wanted to find out exactly and commissioned a scientific study to determine the carbon footprint of our yoga mat in comparison to other products.
The special feature of cork as a material is that it is not the wood of the trees that is used, but only the bark.
The bark is harvested for the first time after about 25 years, then regularly every 8-9 years.1 Various studies assume that 70 tons of CO₂ are bound in the atmosphere for every ton of cork harvested.2 Another study, UAB 2011, assumes a much lower value, but with 18 kg of bound CO₂ per kg of harvested cork, still with a clearly negative CO₂ balance.3
As a result, this study concludes that the value from the UAB study is too high by a factor of 3.6 to 4.5.4
We agree with this reasoning in order to obtain a result that is as meaningful as possible. For example, allocation must be taken into account, which means that the area of cork forest could also be used for other purposes. Ultimately, however, it remains the case that harvesting the cork oak leads to up to three times more CO₂ being sequestered than if the cork bark were not harvested.
The material alone is not decisive
This means that we initially have the results of the pure material. However, there are many other factors such as energy consumption during production, transportation routes, packaging and much more. These factors are taken into account in our values and lead to interesting results.
The weighting of origin
The majority of global market production comes from China and is transported by sea. However, due to the immensely high loading capacities of container ships, the relative CO₂ share per kg of freight is comparatively low, although the total CO₂ emissions of a container ship are immense.
Transportation routes
So how do you weight the high total emissions compared to the low emissions per kg of product? It is difficult to find the right approach, but we have used the supposedly cheaper per kg of freight when comparing different transport routes (this means that we have classified products from Asia as even cheaper in comparison, although in our opinion the lower value per kg of freight is not necessarily an indication that the sea route is sustainable).
The bYo yoga mat is sustainably and carefully manufactured in Portugal. This is ideal because the natural material is processed directly at the place of harvest. The short transportation routes lead to a further improved result.
bYo is carbon negative!
With a value of -4.93 kg CO₂ , we are carbon negative. To explain: a product is CO₂-neutral if the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere corresponds to the amount of CO₂ emissions removed from the atmosphere. The impact is neutral, zero. The so-called "carbon negative" goes one step further: because "carbon negative" is a product at the point in time when the amount of emissions removed from the atmosphere is greater than the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere. The latter applies to our bYo yoga mat.
The result confirms our values of developing sports products in harmony with our environment.
1 https://kork.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Von_der_Korkeiche_zum_Kork.pdf
2 https://co2neg.com/power-of-cork
3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22813756/
Further references
International Energy Administration. 2008. "CO₂ Emissions from Fuel Combustion" ISSN 1683-4291.
http://lysander.sourceoecd.org.libproxy-wb.imf.org/vl=1376909/cl=15/nw=1/rpsv/statistic/s26_about.htm?jnlissn=16834291
International Panel on Climate Change. 2006. "2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories."
http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/index.html