This is one of our favorite salvage stories – a super strong, durable material that is hard to dispose of and a real design challenge. We buy these ropes at the end of their first life at a climbing gym, and transform them into the handles of our core collection of bags and aprons. There are very specific design challenges to working with used climbing ropes:

• 1 CLEANING

• As with all salvage materials, this is not the beginning of their story. The ropes come to us covered in chalk and touched by many hands. Cleaning is a necessity. We use this opportunity to add consistent color to the ropes.

• 2 WEIGHT

• They are heavy. Each rope weighs over 5 pounds, so transport is a workout in itself. Minimizing the weight of the ropes for product design was essential, and took months of R+D.

• 3 SHAPE

• They are tubular. In handbag design, a tubular handle is not a comfortable handle! All of our initial design tests with the ropes failed our high standards for comfort and use.

After months of testing, we developed a 5-step process for transforming the ropes from their original state into the finished, flat, comfortable handle on your Rewilder bag! Finally. We love the look and feel of the flattened ropes, zig-zag stitched together.

We donate the insides of our repurposed ropes to Trash 4 Teaching, a cool non-profit teaching kids to design with trash. If you have other ideas for the second life of this nylon rope, let us know!