SÜGA Yoga Mat: A Second Life for Wetsuits
Lauren Collison July 15th, 2016 Posted In: Articles
Suga Yoga Mats
When you think of wetsuits, you typically don’t think of a yoga mat. Between you and me, I would’ve never put the two together. So you can imagine my surprise one morning as I was scanning the website, The Inertia, and spotted this article about recycled wetsuits being turned into a yoga mat. Say what?!
It was kind of meant to be from the beginning, you know? Me, a practicing yogi who also happens to work in the wetsuit world. SÜGA Mats, a company based on the love of surfing and yoga but wants to keep petrochemical neoprene wetsuits out of landfills by recycling them into yoga mats. #bliss
I reached out to the founder of the company, Brian (Hi Brian!), to see if he’d like to take some of our damaged wetsuits and give them another life. He accepted our suits and he kindly sent me a yoga mat.
Alright, time to talk about the yoga mat!
It was the perfect summer evening to take the yoga mat out and give it a go. I really like the specks of color throughout the mat; it adds interest to a basic black mat. I also thoroughly enjoyed the 5mm thickness and the cushioning. The density of the yoga mat provided just the right amount of cushion for poses like headstand (even on blacktop since that’s the flattest surface I could find to practice.)
BUT, because neoprene wetsuits are dense, that means you have a heavier yoga mat. Typical mats can weigh next to nothing but this yoga mat definitely weighed something. In defense of the weight of the mat though, I personally spend more time on the yoga mat instead of toting it around, but everyone is different, so you’d have to take that into consideration.
SÜGAMat is easy to roll out and roll up and it also doesn’t have any weird smells like some other yoga mats on the market. I hope that the material holds up after multiple uses, because it feels a little brittle. And if it doesn’t, Süga has this awesome 60 day warranty.
For $20 extra, you can purchase the C2G (Cradle 2 Grave) yoga mat. This option lets you send your mat back if there’s any issues and they’ll send you a new one for free (and recycle the one you sent back – cool, right?). You have a mat for life! And if you didn’t purchase a Süga C2G mat, you can still send your used yoga mat to them for a discount on your next mat and they’ll recycle the old!
And as far as traction goes (because I know this is a biggie for a lot of yogis, including myself), I wasn’t disappointed. The grip was good and I definitely didn’t feel like I was slipping. Nothing is worse than losing your focus during a practice because you can’t get a solid grip into the mat.
What am I the happiest about with this yoga mat? The fact that the company takes an item that’s not particularly good for the environment and gives it a second life. Suga has a mission to reduce their environmental footprint and that’s something that I (and Wetsuit Wearhouse) can definitely get behind. Even if you don’t practice yoga and you have some old or damaged wetsuits just taking up space, send SÜGA your suits. Having those wetsuits recycled is better than having them sit in a landfill anyways.
Photography by Dave Mentzer
Want to learn more about the company? Check out the video below or visit their website!
SUGA – premium quality yoga mats made entirely from recycled wetsuits from SÜGA on Vimeo.
