How to Climb Green

What Is Climb Green?

Our Climb Green collection comprises a number of products that you can use to make your climbing equipment more responsible. Even today, our carabiners, ropes, slings, climbing harnesses, and helmets provide clear proof that responsible personal protective equipment without compromises is possible.

It is important to us that these products are a genuinely responsible option that you can easily find. We have therefore created the Climb Green label to make identifying this responsible equipment easy.

What Does the Climb Green Label Mean?

EDELRID’s Climb Green label is a dynamic, internally developed label for products that currently fulfil the highest standards of responsible design and production on the market in their respective product group.

‘Dynamic’ means that the product’s status can change. As soon as another product becomes available on the market that fulfils a higher standard with regard to responsible design and production, our product loses the Climb Green label. Despite this, it naturally retains all of its properties and remains a product with a responsible background from both social and ecological perspectives.

By using the label, we want to give our customers and users transparent information about which of our products fulfil the highest standards and where other options may now exist.

Our Climb Green Manifesto

Are you wondering how we rate responsibility? Or which products are currently awarded with the Climb Green label? Read full background information and details about Climb Green and obtain transparent information about our label.

Do you have any questions?

Sustainability vs. Responsibility

We deliberately refrain from using the now overused term ‘sustainable’. We believe that sustainability means that something is kept at the same level. As such, a sustainable product would help our environment to remain as healthy, clean or full of life as it currently is, or even benefit it. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, strictly speaking, this does not apply to any our products.

We therefore deliberately refrain from using the word ‘sustainability’ and replace it with ‘responsibility’, as responsibility is our path to our goal. This not only applies to the ecological aspects of our design chain but also the social ones. At EDELRID, we therefore pursue a long-term vision and gradually improve ourselves by being aware of the overall situation when implementing our company vision and targets, consequently making responsible decisions and acting accordingly.

The 3 R or the Properties of Climb Green Products

All new development activities at EDELRID start with three core requirements: safety, functionality, and responsibility.

With regard to responsibility, we question the potential negative effects of the product during all development projects. This includes looking at a whole range of aspects such as the impact on climate, ozone depletion, water usage, energy usage, ecotoxicity, and particulate matter, to name just a few of the categories we have defined. As you can see, this is a complex undertaking.

In a second step, we follow our internal mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle.

These three approaches, known as the 3 R, are also reflected in some of our product names, such as the NEO 3R or the ZODIAC 3R. This enables you to instantly identify the products in our collection that have been manufactured under consideration of the following aspects:

1. REDUCE

This is the most effective operational principle and involves omitting or reducing something that was originally a component in order to avoid or reduce the damage caused by it.

Example: the PFC-free Eco Dry impregnation does not use environmentally harmful PFCs. Non-anodized carabiners such as the HMS BULLETPROOF ECO eliminate the use of toxic chemicals in the staining process.

2. REUSE

The second R takes the middle place in terms of effectiveness. This concept means that a component is reused in its current condition in another product. The ecological impact has already taken place and is not heightened by the reuse.

Example: the PARROT 9.8 MM uses leftover yarns from our production processes, which are rewound and turned into a new rope on the braiding machines, thereby receiving a new purpose.

3. RECYCLE

The least effective yet most popular of the three Rs. Unlike with reuse, recycling always involves a subsequent, often energy-intensive process for the material to be able to enter the life cycle of another product. As with reuse, however, fewer raw materials are required. Recycling also prevents products or material from being thrown away, i.e. waste from being created. The third R is therefore primarily the right choice if existing production waste cannot be used for production processes.

Example: the outer shell of the ZODIAC 3R is 100% made from recycled climbing ropes from EDELRID production processes and the material for the EPS inner shell is also fully recycled.

What Is a ‘Responsible’ Product?

The specific sequence of the 3 Rs gives us an initial indication when it comes to assessing the sometimes unquantifiable initiatives around a product. There are many different types of environmental damage, and we therefore have to define what responsible means on a product-group-specific basis.

The table below displays the product groups that contain products with a Climb Green label in the current collection. We present the (cumulative) criteria that we currently consider to be the highest realized standard of responsibility.

Some criteria are mutually exclusive and therefore marked with a ‘|’, meaning ‘or’.

In the categories that are not listed below, we do not currently regard any of our products as the most responsible option. This is either due to the availability of a third-party product, which represents such an option, or because there is currently simply no stand-out product on the market that qualifies as the most responsible option.

Product group	Subgroup	Criteria
Ropes	Dynamic DRY ropes	PFC and PFAS-free (UIAA dry standard), bluesign® certified materials
	Dynamic ropes	Reused yarn \| Recycled yarn + bluesign® product
	Static ropes	Recycled yarn + bluesign® certified materials
Climbing harnesses	-	bluesign® product
Helmets	-	Recycled load-bearing materials
Slings/tapes	-	Organic-based yarn \| Recycled yarn
Carabiners	Aluminium	Non-anodized + steel insert
Chalk bags	-	bluesign® product
Accessories	-	Recycled materials \| Reused materials

Which Products Currently Have the Climb Green Label and What Distinguishes Them?

The table below indicates the Climb Green products in the summer collection 2024. We will update this page on an annual basis as you can be sure that we are already working on further products to offer you as responsible climbing equipment.

Detailed information about the criteria fulfilled by products awarded the Climb Green label can be found in our Climb Green product overview.

Show the climb green product overview