If It Breaks, the Recycling Bit Means Nothing

Somebody asked me last week whether the belts are properly durable, or whether the recycled thing is more of a nice idea than a real product.

Fair question. Here is the honest answer.

The rope belt has to outlast a leather one. That is the bar. Not good for recycled. Not decent considering. It has to beat the normal version, or there is no point in me making it at all.

Same with the keyrings. A climbing rope loop keychain has to survive a set of car keys for five years. In and out of a pocket, dropped on car parks, sat on. If it frays in eight months I have not saved anything. I have made a bit of landfill that took the scenic route.

That is the bit people miss about recycled products. If it breaks, the recycling bit means nothing. You have used up a rope, my time, a box, a stamp and a van, and the customer still has to go and buy the thing again. That is worse than doing nothing.

The order I build things in

Durable comes first. Before cost. Before shipping. Before it looks nice on a shelf.

That sounds obvious written down, but it is not how most things get made. Usually somebody picks a price, then works backwards until the product is cheap enough to hit it. Durability is whatever happens to survive that process.

I do it the other way round. Make it last, then work out the rest.

It is slower, it costs more, and it kills a lot of good ideas. I have binned prototypes that looked brilliant because they came apart when I pulled hard enough. Every product goes through fifteen to twenty rounds before it goes anywhere near the shop, and every one gets stress tested until something gives. Then I fix the bit that gave and go again.

What a recycled climbing rope belt has to survive

Daily wear, for years, not just weekends. Being yanked at. Rain, because this is Aberdeen. Being sat on in a car seat. Shoved in a bag. Washed when somebody forgets and puts the whole lot through the machine.

A climbing rope bracelet gets a harder life again, because folk wear those in the shower and never take them off.

The good news is the raw material is already built for far worse. A climbing rope gets retired after five to ten years because the core wears in ways you cannot see from the outside, and nobody sensible gambles a life on a maybe. Retired from holding a person is not the same as worn out. Holding your trousers up is a much easier day than catching a falling climber.

So the rope is never the weak point. The weak point is always me. The stitching, the buckle, the join. That is what I test to failure, and that is what every recycled climbing rope belt gets built around long before I worry about anything else. Each one is made to your actual waist size, 22 to 50 inches, so it fits properly rather than nearly.

Quality first. Sustainable second.

I know that sounds backwards coming from a man who makes everything out of bin material.

But nobody buys something because it is sustainable. They buy it because it is good. Recycled is the story, it is not the reason anybody hands over money. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with a shelf full of worthy tat that nobody actually wants.

Make it good. Then tell them what it is made of. In that order.

Nylon rope takes hundreds of years to break down, and one climbing rope costs about 46.6 kg of CO2 to make in the first place. If I turn that into something that lasts eight months, I have not fixed a thing. I have moved the problem along and stuck a nicer label on it.

Turn it into a belt you are still wearing in ten years and it is a completely different sum. That is the whole job, really.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George