Is Climbing Rope Biodegradable? No. Here Is Why.

Somebody messaged me last week asking if they could just bury their old rope in the garden. Compost it, basically. Let nature have it back.

I loved that they asked instead of just doing it. But no. Please do not bury your rope.

Climbing rope is not biodegradable. Not a bit. And the reason why is the same reason it is brilliant at catching you when you fall.

Quick one before you read on. I take retired rope into a workshop in Aberdeen and turn it into belts, dog leads and keychains. Send me yours, or see what it becomes.

Is climbing rope biodegradable? Short answer, no

Your rope is nylon. Core and sheath, both of it. Nylon is a plastic, made from oil, invented specifically to be strong and stretchy and to not fall apart when it gets wet or cold or dirty.

That is exactly what you want hanging off a cliff. It is exactly what you do not want in the ground.

Biodegrading means microbes eat the material and turn it back into soil. Microbes have been eating wood and wool and cotton for millions of years, so they are good at it. Nylon has been around since the 1930s. Almost nothing in the soil recognises it as food.

So it does not rot. It just gets worn down, slowly, by sun and weather and abrasion, into smaller and smaller pieces of the same plastic. Hundreds of years of that. The rope in your cupboard will outlive you, your kids, and probably their kids.

What about burning it, or biodegradable rope

Do not burn it in the garden. Burning nylon at low temperature gives off some genuinely nasty stuff and you will be stood in the middle of it. Industrial incineration is a different thing, but that is not you and a fire pit.

And no, there is no biodegradable climbing rope. There will not be one soon either. A rope that breaks down when microbes get at it is a rope that breaks down in your rucksack. Those two things cannot both be true, so the industry has quite reasonably picked the one where you survive.

Natural fibre ropes do rot, which is exactly why we stopped climbing on them.

The only fix that actually works

If it will not rot and it should not be burnt and nobody has built a plant to properly recycle it, you are left with one honest answer. Keep using it.

All that carbon is already spent. It went up the chimney years ago when the rope was made. The worst thing you can do now is throw the material away and make somebody produce more of it.

So the rope keeps working. It comes to the workshop in Aberdeen and goes back out as recycled climbing rope belts built to outlast anything from a big-box store, climbing rope bracelets made to wrist size, and gifts for climbers with a story attached.

Same nylon. Same hundreds of years. Just spent on somebody's waist instead of in a hole in the ground.

If you want the practical side of this, have a look at where to recycle climbing rope in the UK, or when to retire a climbing rope if yours is not done yet.

So do not bury it. I promise the garden does not want it and neither does the bin.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George