Wednesday 29 July 2009

Enviromental route setting?

To keep with the Green theme the route setting department i.e. Mike A.K.A me has been researching how climbing holds are made and looking into whether we can source our holds from the most sustainable companies out there. But first I had to find out how the holds are made.

Unfortunately for the world the results were not good. Currently these are some the materials that are going into making the pretty plastic shapes we love so much;
Styrene, Methyl Ethyl Ketone Peroxide, Epichlorohydrine, Bisphenol-A ,Toluene diisocyanate-TDI, Hexamethylene diisocyanate-HMDI

If these words mean as much to you as they did to me let me summarise what some of these bad boys can do;
They are Carcinogenic, mutagenic, harmful to skin and eyes, form explosive mixtures in the air, highly flammable, extremely destructive to tissue , affect embryo or foetus, are a reproductive hazard, very toxic by inhalation and may explode when heated! Don’t panic and run for your bio hazard outfit just yet though because all these materials become stable once cured and the finished hold is perfectly safe to handle.

So with this newfound knowledge on the materials involved I emailed all the hold companies we currently purchase holds from and asked them what their stand on the hold making game was and what, if any, environmental policies they had.

From the responses I got and through further research via Greengrip.org it was becoming clear that the technology for making quality environmentally friendly climbing holds just is not out there at the moment.

So what can I do? At this stage we can concentrate on the companies with the strongest written environmental policies and avoid air freight delivery. So our latest purchases have been with Bulgarian based HRT safety whose green policy is extremely strong and make the majority of the holds we have ordered from Polyurethane. We have also ordered from Chesterfield based company Core Climbing.

So where can hold manufacturing go from here? According to sites such as Greengrip the technologies and materials are becoming available but they need to be embraced and tested via the companies that are making 1000’s of holds every week. On the current available materials side companies such as HRT and Holdz are now switching over to a Polyurethane set-up similar to that of the American market. Polyurethane is used as opposed to Polyester resin which is a different form of plastic that uses around a fifth less material to make each hold and this form of the plastic is less toxic in handling and is therefore said to be more environmentally friendly way of producing climbing holds.
From here it’s over to those companies who make the holds to push the technology forward and try and reduce the impact that hold production currently has on the environment.



Monday 20 July 2009

Check us out!

The guys over at UKClimbing seem to think it's big news - http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=48331

They must be right. In the first two hours of the news item going live it was viewed over 300 times- and not just by me ;-)

Thanks UKC! Hopefully this will get the word out and we'll be getting plenty of applications in...the more the better.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Environmental Awards- deadline extension

We've already had some interest in the Environmental Awards, but we want to extend the deadline to make sure that everyone has a chance to research and put together a good application.

New initial application deadline: 15 September 2009
Shortlist: 15 October 2009
Awards: 1 November 2009

You can download our application form and notes for applicants here:
E0 Environmental Awards Notes for Applicants.pdf
E1 Environmental Award Application Form.doc

For further information contact ben@castle-climbing.co.uk

Audrey

Wednesday 8 July 2009

The Castle goes to Glastonbury with Greenpeace





A number of very tired sunburnt members of staff have just returned from the Glastonbury festival having spent 6 days building , running and then dismantling the Greenpeace "out of control tower" climbing wall. The Greenpeace field at Glastonbury this year was transformed into a replica of Sipson village and the Greenpeace AirPlot - which will be obliterated by a third runway at Heathrow, residents from the village were in attendance as well as dozens of Greenpeace volunteers who all weekend did a great job of informing festival goers about the issues surrounding the enviromental disaster that the proposed third runway at Heathrow would create. The wall was a massive success with over 1100 adults and children managing to keep Mike, Iwona, Richard, Aron, Olly and Dean busy in between their meditation and yoga sessions that made up their times off shift from the wall. (I think they may have also attended a performance or two of some popular music combos).