Yes, You Can Build a Business Out of Trash

Hot take: you can build a scalable business out of trash. You have just dramatically underestimated how much trash there actually is.

I said that on Instagram this week and a few folk came back with the usual line. "Recycled materials can't scale." "You'll run out." "It's a nice hobby, George."

So let me show you what I see from a wee studio in Torry.

The raw material was never the problem

Every week, climbing gyms across the UK bin rope the second it is retired. Not because it is broken. Because it has done its hours, or taken its falls, and the rules say it is done. Out it goes.

Every day, another mountain of milk bottles, caps and tubs gets tossed. Nobody has built a system to catch it before it hits landfill, so it hits landfill.

Then there is the North Sea. Oil and gas gets through enormous amounts of rope and sling. Nobody counts it. Nobody asks for it back.

In January 2026 alone, I pulled more than 5 km of retired rope out of that stream. That is one certified waste man, one van, one city. Nylon takes hundreds of years to break down. It is not going anywhere. The pile just gets bigger.

So when someone tells me recycled materials can't scale, I just think: you haven't seen how much trash is out there. I have. It's a lot.

Building a business from waste is the unglamorous bit

Here is the actual problem. Almost nobody is bothering to collect it, sort it, and turn it into something people actually want.

That is the whole business, really. Not a shortage of waste. A shortage of people stubborn enough to deal with it.

Dealing with it looks like this. Driving to a climbing wall on a Tuesday to pick up a bin bag of rope that smells of chalk and feet. Washing it. Sorting it by colour and diameter. Cutting out the core shots. Then, and only then, making a recycled climbing rope belt that somebody will wear for years.

Same story with the HDPE. Milk bottle caps do not arrive clean and sorted. Somebody has to rinse them, strip the labels, and melt them at around 120 to 130 C. That somebody is me, in a studio, at 9pm, wondering why I did not just get a normal job.

None of this is clever. It is just graft that most people skip because it is boring. Which is exactly why there is room for someone to do it.

So can it scale?

Mammut ran a rope collection scheme in Switzerland. Fifty drop-off points, three months, 748 kg of rope. That is one brand, one small country, one quarter. Nobody ran out.

I am one person with a van in Aberdeen and I still cannot keep up with what the climbing walls, arborists and rope access crews want to give me. The bottleneck has never once been supply. It is my hands, my hours, and how fast I can turn a dead rope into a bracelet made to your wrist size or a keychain that used to hold a climber.

That is a good problem. It means the scaling question is about people and process, not about material. And people and process are things you can build.

If you care about where your stuff comes from, the environmental side, the social side, all of it, you are exactly who this is for. Every quid goes to a real person, and every product has already had one life before it got to you.

One question for you. What is the most "that'll never scale" idea you have heard that just needed someone willing to do the unglamorous bit? Tell me. I collect those the way I collect rope.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George