Our Yoga Carbon Footprint
By Laura Potts
How much of our yoga associated activities are at odds with our first principle of ahimsa? And how can we change those practices and find ways to make our yoga a less damaging activity? We can limit fuel use and flying in particular, so not embarking on ‘yoga tourism’ to lovely destinations overseas; we can choose non oil-based derivatives for equipment, which are so much more widely available now; use fairly traded organic cotton for clothing, and so on. It’s an interesting and revealing exercise to calculate your carbon footprint, factoring in yoga related activities and choices. There is a good tool available at https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/, which analyses your result and suggests areas that can be improved.
offsets are audited according to the rules laid out in the Kyoto protocol and must also show social benefits for local communities. As a starting point, have a look at https://www. goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-youremissions. In Pune, we can refuse all plastic bags and bottles very easily – and when you see the waste dumped in open spaces, often foraged by poor children, and burned on winter fires, you will surely want to. It’s great to learn from a recent visitor that this is now a recognised problem, with airlines into Mumbai urging
Iyengar Yoga News No. 36
Going to RIMYI in Pune has, of course, a gigantic carbon footprint. There are various ways we can try to mitigate the harmful effects on the environment, and many people will think of carbon offsetting schemes for the travel involved. These are quite controversial, and some have argued that they basically exonerate our guilty consciences, rather than positively contributing to carbon savings. And even robust schemes (tree planting has long since been superseded by green energy schemes) are hard to evaluate – and the real objective has to be that we minimise our himsa activities and carbon emissions across the board. But environmental NGOs have worked hard in recent years to set a ‘gold standard’ for offsetting schemes, so if you decide to go to RIMYI there are ways at least to offset some of the harm caused by the journey, making use of, for instance, the Voluntary Gold Standard (VGS). VGS-certified SPRING 2020
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