Study on the sustainability of the bYo yoga mat

How sustainable is our bYo yoga mat? A thought that has played a decisive role for us from the very beginning. Reason enough for us to have our 100 percent cork yoga mat examined more closely. The results regarding the CO₂ footprint made us very proud. But first things first.

Every day we encounter the word "sustainability," as it plays an increasingly important role in the media, politics, and advertising. No wonder: because 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 might not be true at all.

Yoga and Sustainability

When we started looking into the topic of yoga mats, it quickly became clear to us how little sustainability is anchored in the yoga scene. It actually surprised us even more negatively how often mats that are ultimately not sustainable are touted as such. Reason enough for us to look even closer behind the scenes. How sustainable is our bYo yoga mat? We wanted to know exactly and commissioned a scientific study to determine the CO₂ footprint of our yoga mat in comparison to other products.

The Study Setting
In addition to CO₂, there are other greenhouse gases (including methane, nitrous oxide) whose effect on the warming of the Earth's atmosphere is converted into the equivalent amount of CO₂ so that the warming effect of a greenhouse gas mixture can be expressed by a single number.
Consideration of CO2 Equivalents
This value is referred to as CO₂e, which we also used as the basis for the study's results. All steps in production were taken into account, starting from the employees' commute, to energy consumption in the workplace, the material used, and finally the shipping of the finished goods.
Comparison with other materials
Furthermore, the emissions of yoga mats with different materials such as PVC, TPE, latex, and cork were determined in comparison to the bYo yoga mat. The country of manufacture was taken into account. For different sources of emission values of the same type, the value that demonstrably has a higher negative or lower positive impact was used, and this was explained accordingly. All values are provided with sources as references.
Properties of the material cork

The special feature of the material cork is that it is not the wood of the trees that is used, but exclusively the bark.

The harvesting of the bark occurs for the first time after about 25 years, and then regularly at intervals of 8-9 years.1 Various studies assume that 70 tons of CO₂ are sequestered in the atmosphere per ton of harvested cork.2 Another study, UAB 2011, assumes a significantly lower value, however at 18 kg of bound CO₂ per kg of harvested cork, it is still a clearly negative CO₂ balance.3

Basically, the results of these studies take sequestration into account. This means that the CO₂ effect of the entire cork forest stand is included in the calculations. According to another study, however, it is questionable whether and to what extent sequestration should be taken into account.

As a result, this study concludes that the value from the UAB study is set too high by a factor of 3.6 to 4.5.4

We agree with this line of reasoning in order to obtain the most meaningful result possible. For example, allocation must be taken into account, which means that the area of the cork forest could also be used for other purposes. Ultimately, it remains the case that harvesting the cork oak leads to up to three times more CO₂ being bound than if the cork bark were not harvested.

The material alone is not the deciding factor

Thus, we first have the results for the raw material. But many other factors are added, such as energy consumption during production, transport routes, packaging, and much more. These factors are included in our values and lead to interesting results.

The weighting of origin

The majority of world market production comes from China and is transported by sea. Due to the immensely high load capacities of container ships, the relative CO₂ share per kg of cargo is comparatively low, even though the total CO₂ output of a container ship is immense.

Transport routes

How do you weight the high total output compared to the low output per kg of product? It is difficult to find the right approach, however, in comparing different transport routes, we used the supposedly more favorable one per kg of cargo (this means that we classified products from Asia as even more favorable in comparison, although in our opinion the lower value per kg of cargo is not necessarily an indication that sea transport is sustainable).

The bYo yoga mat is manufactured sustainably and gently in Portugal. This is ideal because the natural material is processed directly at the place of harvest. The short transport 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 when the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere corresponds to the amount of CO₂ emissions removed from the atmosphere. The impact is neutral, zero. So-called "carbon negative" goes one step further: a product is "carbon negative" at the moment 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.

With this result, we feel confirmed in 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/

4 https://cedelft.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/CE_Delft_27925_Natural_cork_bottle_stoppers_Def.pdf

Further references

https://www.winnipeg.ca/finance/findata/matmgt/documents/2012/682-2012/682-2012_Appendix_H-WSTP_South_End_Plant_Process_Selection_Report/Appendix%207.pdf

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

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