We aim to be a green yoga retreat but what can we really do?
Firstly to mention that the immediate irony of us discussing environmental issues, when we are a yoga retreat that encourages guests to fly to us, does not escape us. And in these days of the rise of the far right it could be said that there are far more important political issues at stake – during the 2025 season for the first time we have been directly collecting money for Gaza and have had a great response from our guests. However we still try to do our best when it comes to environmental issues and constantly strive to make the yoga retreat more eco-friendly. It is not always simple but this is no reason not to aim high. Often confusion over ‘the best’ path is used as a reason for inaction. What you can do practically often depends on your location and circumstances. We do believe we need a firm starting intention of appreciating our presence on the planet as visitors and custodians. When we acknowledge an interactive relationship with the planet the appropriate course of action is normally pretty clear. Yoga must help us connect to ourselves and surroundings, encouraging us to protect both people and the environment.
Here we hope to outline what we do already, both as an aspiring green yoga retreat as well as personally in our everyday decisions. We also have ideas for where the retreat can become a more environmentally conscious place. Hopefully it’s good for guests to know where we stand in order to help in our efforts, as well be in a position to make informed suggestions for improvements. Any suggestions are highly appreciated.
Tree planting
In 2020 for our yearly good will gesture stunt we raised money to plant trees through a three retreat giveaway and matched what we raised. In the end we raised money for over 60,000 trees with Eden Reforestation. The reason we chose this tree planting charity over others was that it worked with local communities to help themselves rather than just wanging trees in the ground.
Carbon footprint
Owning a business which encourages guests to fly in planes is far from the environmentalist’s dream! For the 2014 and 2015 season we estimated our carbon footprint from guests’ flights to the retreat and paid carbon offsetter Clear to offset the created carbon. We also included our energy use, ground transport use etc to estimate our emission impact. Click to see 2014 Yoga Rocks carbon offset certificate or the 2015 Yoga Rocks carbon offset certificate. We are open to bright ideas on alternatives to formal carbon offset schemes or thoughts on the best ones. While we don’t think it’s ideal it’s our initial foray into a relatively unknown quantity.
Packaging, Recycling & Waste
There is no magic solution to rubbish apart from not producing it, so we avoid to the max buying packaged goods as well as throwaway tat. Stuff you put in the bin doesn’t magically vanish it all has to go somewhere. Once you the penny drops and you look around with new eyes the supermarkets look quite different. Good also to consider that generally the more packaging, the more preserved, further travelled and the lower the nutritional content of the food!
In 2012 we aimed for a ten year plan to zero waste in a bid to start somewhere on what seemed like an impossibly huge task. We didn’t make it! More attainable is no non-recyclable waste with an aim of reducing all waste. We eat as much of our leftovers as possible and our neighbour’s chickens eat the rest. They love spagetti! Our veg is almost all from the island and arrives in reusable crates from local farmers.. We go through a lot of beans and have mostly paper sacks of beans delivered from Athens.
Recycling on Crete is in its infancy with the waste split into normal rubbish for landfill, another bin for all of paper, card, tetra packs (these are the worst as they are mixed materials and if you start to look into it the recycling process is highly dubious) and plastic bottles (numbers 1 & 2), and finally there are glass containers. This makes the sorting of rubbish quite easy, especially with help from our guests. What we lack is plastic bag recycling, and though we try not to accumulate them, realistically some creep in. We have a store of clean bags for reuse. We are left with the plastic packaging that can’t be recycled ever and mostly hard plastic boxes that we re-use until they die. These number 5s can be recycled but it is not economical right now so only a few countries will take them. Batteries and small electricals can also be disposed of separately on Crete so even with the limited recycling available we send minimal rubbish off to landfill.
Next: Sometimes yoga retreat guests or even our team don’t know exactly where to put what – we try to make sure everyone is informed easily. Options to reduce waste more include buying in bulk to reduce packaging more and taking our own boxes/bags for the fresh coffee and teas. The freshly ground coffee now arrives in reusable tubs. Herbal teas we buy are some of the last plastic bag type items we bring into the retreat regularly. Toilet paper is our bulkiest waste each week – more on that later on…
Recycling comp
We used to run a recycling competition on each yoga retreat week where we challenge the whole group to sort their recycling correctly in their room. We now just do this if a group or a teacher looks keen or if the recycling has been particularly time consuming to sort! If all the group get it right we buy everyone’s drinks at the taverna on Friday night. It is a little hard to remember so they get the handy notice above on the recycling bin in each room. Not many groups get it just right but it is a fun way to increase awareness. Hopefully on yoga holiday where guests aren’t buying stuff and don’t have to dash off anywhere they can place their rubbish in the appropriate bins and maybe start some good habits.
Growing stuff
The kitchen uses hundreds of kilos of veggies every week so growing our own (though we’d love to) is not a currently a practical option aside from herbs including some rather handsome lemon grass plants. A special Thai green curry paste is on the cards at some point with the lemon grass and some homegrown Greek basil and chili – should be delicious. Only certain plants like the ambience as the spectacular wind that blows up occasionally is an additional challenge for any flora along our coast. This is an old picture and we are not sure why Phil had dug such a deep pit to plant the lemongrass but entertaining nevertheless.
Vegetarian/Vegan
All the food at the retreat is vegetarian with a leaning towards vegan. However as few of our guests are vegan or even full time vegetarians we think it makes sense to serve some local cheeses, free range eggs and retreat-made yoghurt with fresh sheep milk from up the road. Any animal products used are obvious and not just thrown in for the sake of it. We still buy supermarket cow milk which is used in the guest kitchen mainly for breakfast in beverages.
Next: Presently the organic cow milk available is overly packaged but this could change and become an option. There could be only sheep milk available (that we pick up in a re-useable container) but this might not appeal to everyone!
Cretan animal products
All the cheese at the retreat is very locally made and all from sheep and goat milk. Some meat loving Cretans were trying to persuade a vegetarian friend that since he ate dairy products then he may as well eat lamb as well, to them one necessitated the other. Their plot went awry when he saw what they were saying and chose to go vegan instead! That said the Cretan sheep and goats are very well treated generally, happily trotting around the Cretan countryside. There’s no intensive farming of these animals.
Olive oil
The olive oil we use is delicious and grown about an hour away from us by Vaslilis and Cate. Genuinely made by nice folk who treat the land and trees well, producing exceptional results in the oil as a result of meticulous care throughout the season and especially at harvest time. A blueprint of how we’d like all our food connections to be – us supporting nearby folk who farm with love. Their oil is now available out and about: Mesto Artisan Olive Oil
Pooh bags and bum guns
Some claim an ancient Minoan king, or at least the Minoans invented the first flushing toilet in the world on Crete. Despite this most Cretan, as well as Greek toilets, can’t handle anything that you haven’t eaten first. So, the paper goes into a bin next to the toilet, cheerfully nicknamed pooh bins at Yoga Rocks. We use compostable bags made from potatoes for these bins and also biodegradable big rubbish bags to collect them in though then these go off to landfill. (We have considered using paper bags and also composting or burning this waste but the bins are also used for other un-recyclable rubbish so this won’t currently work.)
Next: One option for reducing toilet paper use would be to install bum guns which are used in a lot of Eastern lands, being particularly popular in S.E Asia. We love this option and are hoping to install a prototype at some point to see how it goes. We’d then get guest feedback as the change is probably not for all 😉
Litter Picking
We are lucky our beaches are super clean in part as we are in a beautiful and isolated location. This should inspire us to clean up our act – sometimes our waste ends up in currents polluting other similarly beautiful spots. Mr R, visiting Grandpa at Yoga Rocks, is a keen litter picker as are were some of our Free Retreat Lotto. Not really sure where we are going with this but a good excuse for a pic of said rubbish recoverer on a stroll up the nearest big hill to Yoga Rocks. Hail litter pickers everywhere.
Volunteers, Free Retreat Lotto & Charity
People need attention too. Most years we have give away a retreat or two away in our Yoga Retreat Giveaways. Each year we have a different focus. There are volunteers helping at the retreat all the time. Mostly energetic people with more time to hang out and enjoy the yoga. It’s hard work but our karma yogis get a chance to retreat in a different way and hopefully spread some Yoga Rocks vibes after they leave.
Straws
Straws: they are annoying pieces of one use plastic and number five on the oceans’ favourite floating plastic list. And the collapse of the paper straw craze manes the plastic straws are back.. We try to say no straw please! No thanks I don’t need a plastic bag. Shifting the current political landscape is a mission but those of us who are in a privileged position to be able to avoid packaging and animal products, why not do so? It is difficult to do anything for causes like Gaza except donate but imagine the quiet overnight revolution if everyone who could just stopped buying meat and plastic!
