Escape Climbing was a small business making holds for climbing walls. In 2017, Anthony Vicino joined its founders, helping them grow from $300,000 to $4 million in revenue over the next three years.
At that time, Vicino recalled, “we were in ultra-frugal-pinch-every-single-penny-until-it-screams mode.” The company was spending money on branded cardboard shipping boxes “because we thought… that’s what real companies do. Gotta look the part, right?”
An employee suggested: “We’re getting hundreds of boxes every day from shipments WE receive… so what if we just… reuse those instead?”
After internally discussing the concern that “it would hurt the brand if people’s stuff was showing up in beat-up old boxes,” they tried it out. To help customers understand this was part of their company’s commitment to sustainability, they attached labels which said, “This box is on its second adventure. Like any good climber, we don’t believe in single-use anything. Pay it forward.” (They still use similar labels today, with a “Keep It Going” theme.)
In addition (as shown in the video below), they partially shredded the cardboard from some of the boxes that were too damaged for shipping products, to create flexible mesh-like wrapping mats to help protect Escape Climbing’s products in shipment.
People who love building climbing walls and scrambling up them are often very environmentally conscious. While reusing shipping boxes and using homegrown packing materials wouldn’t work for a luxury brand, and maybe not many other businesses would dare to try this, it was a ‘hit’ with Escape’s customers, and the company has continued doing so to this day!
See how Escape Climbing reuses shipping boxes and learn about their many other commitments to sustainability.
While we at High Sierra use new shipping boxes, we also seek to reduce packaging waste. We use cardboard boxes just big enough to protect our products, rather than hard-to-open plastic “clamshell” packaging that goes straight into the landfill. (And we encourage you to re-use our boxes for your own shipments and storage!)
You can learn more here about our own sustainability measures, which include using long-lasting, recyclable materials such as lead-free brass and stainless steel in our products, and offsetting our factory’s electricity use with onsite solar energy.
This story appeared in the April 2026 issue of High Sierra Droplets, our monthly newsletter.
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