That means, on average, the climbing population could be using around 50 million pounds of chalk per year. To be conservative, let's say the average climber uses just two bags of chalk per year. Before switching to liquid chalk, I personally used about three to four 16 ounce (0.6 kilogram) bags of chalk per year. It’s hard to say exactly, but we can make an educated guess.Īs of 2020, there are around 25M rock climbers globally. This can lead to an overall negative impact on both plants and animals that rely heavily upon these environments for survival. The environment suffers from contamination and habitat loss. In areas of heavy dolomite mining, airborne particles settle and cover the landscape. Finally, they’re crushed into chunks or sold as granules. The crystals are then separated out using centrifuges or filters. Next, the ore is ground up into powder form to be added to liquid slurry for drying purposes, but this cools down the slurry too much so it can’t contain as many particles: meaning there will still be some larger pieces that are left in the finished product (the powdered chalk). The extraction process begins by blasting off the rock and removing dust with powerful water jets.

Powdered chalk is made of magnesium carbonate, which comes from mining a mineral called dolomite. Let's start at the beginning, how chalk is made and why it matters. However, its environmental impact can be one of the biggest of all our gear. With Earth Day just around the corner, Matt from Pika.life looks at a few of the impacts that climbing chalk has on our environment, and what we can do about them. GUEST ARTICLE - Rock climbing chalk is one of the least expensive and most overlooked pieces of equipment in our climbing gear setup.

Chalk rock