Community

WATCH: The dirty truth about yoga mats

This team has perfected sanitization

  • First machine is located in Pandosy
  • It cleans mats in one minute
  • Yoga mats are a breeding ground for bacteria

After getting a ringworm infection from his mat, an avid yogi decided to invent a new way to keep yoga mats clean.

Mike Perrier is the founder of Clean My Mat, a machine that uses complex technology to make sanitizing mats easier than ever before. It gets the job done in 60 seconds.

“We put our clothes in the washing machine and we have a shower, but we seem to think that throwing a mat on the ground, rolling it up, and not washing it, is an adequate way of keeping it clean,” Perrier told Kelowna10.

“I was going online and trying to figure out how to wash my mat… there wasn’t a way to do it.”

After five years of hard work, Clean My Mat was created, and the first machine is now located inside Cullen’s Cleaning in Pandosy for patrons to use.

There’s an option to pay with a credit card, or purchase loyalty cards or memberships.

“Our challenge right now is getting the yoga community to embrace the fact that their mats are dirty and that they do need to be sanitized on a regular basis,” Perrier said.

Sarah Little, the general manager of Clean My Mat, said the next step of the business is to begin working with yoga studios to incorporate a pickup and drop-off service.

“We can wash their in-house mats and also be there to wash the student mats as well, in a really convenient way,” she said.

The washing process works by putting a yoga mat into a slot at the top of the machine, where rollers bring it through a set of bristles and a mixture of washing fluids including ozonated water, citric acid, and silver ion. Squeegees then help dry the mat as it exits the machine.

“Silver ion works to permeate the virus membranes and it has a 24-hour residual effectiveness,” Little explained.

He said the washing fluid mix kills 99.9 per cent of fungus, bacteria, and viruses throughout the mat, not just on the surface.

The team will be heading to the Banff Yoga Festival in May to share the importance of keeping mats clean.

Published 2022-04-03 by Jordan Brenda

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