A neighbour is throwing out some old seagrass mats. They’re about 6ft long (2m) by 4ft wide (120cm) but are water/mud damaged up the entire length of one side.

They’re a basic horizontal weave – like really, really big bamboo placemats – so are quite flexible if you roll them with the weave, but hard to roll against it (if that makes sense).

Any suggestions about what could be done with them?

(I’m calling it seagrass matting because that’s what it looks like to me – if I’m wrong though, please let me know what it is.)

We’ve had an email from Paul Smith asking:

I’m really interested in how one would recycle a yoga mat? One of the old school, pvc based ones, not the eco friendly one (which I have now).

If Paul means the type of mat I think he means, they’re a long thin piece of foam, about 6ft long and 2ft wide (185cm by 66cm ish) and about half an inch (1cm) thick. Depending on the requirements and the thickness/flexibility of the foam, they can either be rolled up like a camping bedroll or are left flat (the ones at my uni gym were like that).

So any suggestions for reuses? Or are there any recycling options if somewhere (like a gym) was getting rid of them in bulk?

Paul doesn’t say what condition his yoga mat is in – some of the ones at the uni were bashed to smeg at the sides and going thin where they’d been doubled up – so re-use suggestions for falling apart ones would be good too, just in case.

(Photo by bharat – I couldn’t find a picture without a ball in it too, so just imagine that’s not there :) )