The Hour I Spend Matching Rope Colours

Somebody watched me work at a market last month and asked why I was taking so long. I had three lengths of rope on the table and I kept swapping them about. Orange, then teal, then back to orange again. She thought I had lost the plot.

Fair enough. It does look daft from the outside.

But that wee bit of faffing is the difference between a belt you wear and a belt you leave in a drawer. So let me explain what is actually going on in my head when I am standing there like a confused painter.

I do not get to pick the colours

This is the bit people miss. A normal brand orders the colour it wants. I get whatever the climbing walls hand me.

Ropes retire after five to ten years even when they look perfectly fine, because the core wears out where you cannot see it. When a wall pulls a rope off the floor, it lands in my bin bags in whatever colour it happened to be. Some months it is all lime green. Some months I get a run of purple and I quietly do a wee dance.

So my palette is not a decision. It is a delivery. In January alone I saved over 5 km of rope from landfill and not one metre of it came with a colour request form.

That means every batch is a puzzle. I lay it all out, work out what I actually have, and then decide what can be made from it. Backwards from how most products get designed.

What I am looking for in a recycled climbing rope belt

Three things, every time.

First, contrast. Two ropes that are nearly the same shade just look like a mistake. Either they match properly or they clash on purpose. The middle ground is where things go ugly.

Second, what it sits against. A belt lives on denim most of its life. Warm colours like orange and red pop against blue. Pale greys vanish. That is not fashion theory, that is just me holding rope against my own scabby jeans.

Third, the pattern. Climbing rope is not flat colour. It has flecks and stripes woven through the sheath. Two ropes can be "blue" and look nothing alike once you get them side by side.

The bit that costs me money

I could just grab the top two ropes off the pile and crack on. Faster. Cheaper. Nobody would know.

But then every belt would look like it was assembled by a man in a hurry, because it was. And the whole point of this is that the thing you buy should be nicer than something churned out by a machine that has never met you.

So I take the hour. A recycled climbing rope belt gets made to your exact waist, anywhere from 22 to 50 inches, in a colour combination I actually stood there and thought about. Two rope from £25, three rope from £30.

Same goes for the small stuff. The rope bracelets at £12 get sized to your wrist, and the offcuts that are too short for anything else become keychains from £2.90. Nothing goes in the bin. That is the whole rule.

Why it matters more than it sounds

Nylon rope takes hundreds of years to break down. One rope costs about 46 kg of CO2 just to make. Most of them get chucked because there is no easy route to recycle them.

If I am going to rescue that rope, the least I can do is make something you actually want to wear. A belt that lives in a drawer has not saved anything. It has just moved the landfill into your bedroom.

So aye. I stand there swapping colours about like a lunatic. It is worth it.

Not sure what colour someone would want? That is what the Forma gift card is for. Starts at £10 and lets them choose.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George