I’ve been trying to blog and keep up with emails and twitter during most meal breaks, but yesterday I ran into my friend Kate, a rep and model for Fila, and we went to lunch together. She was leaving the next day, so it was a last chance to hang out—and as a social butterfly the huge cafeteria in which the 1000+ Yoga Journal participants dine is schmooze heaven.

In past years, the meals were not only vegan or vegetarian (which this was), but the meals were designed by chef Mary Taylor, our longtime columnist and a prominent veggie chef, and wife of Richard Freeman, the famous yoga teacher. This year, there were styrofoam bowls (which are bad for our air, toxic, and never biodegrade—ever), and the food didn’t seem too “green”—the apples, oranges, pears etc were conventional. Afterward, I called the $9.50 I spent on lunch one of the more expensive $10 buck lunches I’d ever eaten.

Yoga and green, or organic, but co-exist. Yoga is about yoking, harmony, union—green is about living in harmony with our world, which supports all life. And yet, in the yoga community, we’re still learning to green our ways. A community that is, by and large, well off, many yogis drove here in big cars and rented cabins where the thermostat is set at 70plus degress, 24-7. We drink coconut water, then throw away the containers.

Still, thanks to Yoga Journal and Green Yoga, I see sure, steady signs of progress: this year, YJ agreed to forgo a water bottle sponsor and, in partnership with Green Yoga, helped keep 8,000 plastic water bottles from being consumed and recycled, or disposed of. For more on that, click here.

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