One of the most common emails I receive is where to recycle Tennis Balls. Today, Tennis players they have several options to reuse their old tennis balls aside from crafts and donating.
I just gotta Eco Ya
- Players typically open a new can of balls for every match
- Tennis balls cannot be recycled along with other materials
- An estimated 100 million balls enter US landfills every year.
- Less than .5% of tennis balls are recycled
- A set of courts can generate 200 discarded tennis balls each month.
- French Tennis Federation collects and recycles an estimated 10% of its used balls annually. This program, called Operation Balle Jaune, began in 2009, and is now collecting over 1.5 million tennis balls annually. Those balls are being ground into granules and added to the resins used to make durable sports surfaces.
1.) ReTour Tennis founded in 2014 was created to help save Tennis balls from going into our landfills. They work with park and recreation departments, tennis clubs, home-owners associations and others by setting up bins at the tennis court for easy recycling. The tennis balls are shipped to a recycler and remade into tennis balls. Currently they are active in 60 communities.
2.) Project Green Ball for example reuses tennis balls for surfaces. Players can send tennis balls to several different places for recycling.
- They teamed with IGK Equestrian to make equestrian arena turf based on ground tennis balls. To date there are three tennis ball-based turfs in use. The Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, purchased and installed a ball-based turf to replace its old equestrian arena turf.
- Another tennis ball turf with over 45,000 tennis balls was installed at EquiCenter, Inc., a therapeutic riding program in Honeoye Falls, NY.
- In September 2015, a riding surface with over 100,000 dead tennis balls was donated to The Shared Living Collaborative (SLC) in Merrimac, Massachusetts.
- Starting in 2013 Project Green Ball worked with Ace Surfaces, Advanced Polymer Technologies, ECORE International, and HABU to develop cushioned mats with dead tennis balls for tennis court surfaces
Green Machine, adding life and bounce to tennis balls.
3.) Rebounces founded in 2008 is another organization that is dedicated to recycling Tennis Balls. They accept lots of 200+ balls at a time. If you send them your information, they will send you a FREE shipping label.
- Rebounces also has a GREEN Machine, an on-court machine that puts the bounce back into tennis balls, so that players can use the balls more than once.
- Rebounces has also partnered with Ace Surfaces and Advanced Polymer Technology for tennis ball recycling.
4.) Recycaball in the UK also recycles tennis balls and donates back to various charities. They will pay you for every batch of 200 tennis balls.
5.) Recycle Tennis Balls gives back to dog charities and rescue homes.
If you really want to Green Your Tennis Game consider using Penn Tennis balls. Penn reuses the ‘lint’ from tennis balls to remake other tennis balls. They reuse the rubber and oil in their manufacturing process. Some of their packaging is from recycled material and best of all their tennis cans can be put into most cities recycling bins.