What’s Wrong With This Picture? (Plastics)

Plastic. Plastic. Plastic. Everywhere. It may have been true 50 years ago that the future is plastics, but today it most decidedly is not.

We’re trying to create climbing products that minimize harm to the environment at CHALK REBELS. This means reducing our use of plastics in products and packaging.

As a consumer, I find it hard to avoid plastics. It just is everywhere and I’m resigned to doing whatever I can. But as a producer, I feel the stakes are higher. There’s a multiplier for every choice I make: if I don’t use plastics in my products then thousands of end-users won’t have to deal with it. No more separating it out, recycling it, worrying which bin to put it in.

The picture above is just an example of how our suppliers provide product samples to CHALK REBELS: plastics everywhere! That chalk ball could have been wrapped in paper, the liquid chalk in an aluminum tube, the reusable chalk ball could have used natural fibers instead of synthetic ones...

So that's exactly what we are going to do with CHALK REBELS products: think long and hard, not just about the products but about the packaging as well.

(Updated July 2021): Turns out that for our liquid chalks ("Chalk Cream", "Crystal Chalk") it is very hard NOT to use plastic and stay within the EU regulatory framework wrt. cosmetics. We will continue to use plastic for those products. We expect our skincare products (Repair Cream, Repair Balm) to be plastic-free in 2021.