The many lives of a tennis ball
From kid coaching to crash testing to state-of-the-art courts, learn how RecycleBalls is keeping tennis balls in play for years.
RecycleBalls is a pioneering non-profit that started with a trash can and is now helping to solve one of tennis’ biggest environmental challenges. We caught up with its CEO, Erin Cunningham, to find out more.
What’s your background?
My background is in youth and community development. I spent the first chunk of my career working with communities, and in particular, Boys & Girls Clubs and the YMCA supporting diverse partners in taking initiatives that were working well at a regional level and scaling them across a national footprint.
What brought you to RecycleBalls?
Sport and sustainability were new and exciting territory for me but what really attracted me was the potential to make RecycleBalls a global solution to the tennis ball waste issue. My development work had equipped me with the ability to take programs that work and realize their full potential on a larger scale. As the only tennis ball recycling solution in North America, RecycleBalls was established and ready to scale so it was at the perfect stage for me to come in and help achieve that growth. Tennis balls can be reclaimed and reused: it's a problem that can be solved.
Where did the inspiration for RecycleBalls come from?
Literally. A trash can.
It’s a fantastic origin story which started when avid tennis players, Derrick Senior and his son Ryan Senior, peered into a courtside trash can at the end of their game and were met with a mound of bright green tennis balls. Convinced there must be a better way than throwing balls away after a few matches, they did some research and were astounded to find there was nothing in place to address the waste other than a few very localized, disparate efforts. And so, they decided to start from scratch.
What did pioneering a tennis ball recycling solution involve?
Initially a lot of research because there was nothing like it already in existence. One of the early insights was that the solution had to be simple for clubs to adopt. So, in 2016, our founders created our patented shippable recycling bins using club feedback and made them readily available within tennis communities. In doing so, they made it really easy for people to make the decision to recycle their tennis balls instead of throwing them away. Having collection bins courtside made them part of the tennis infrastructure and removed any hassle involved in lugging tennis balls to recycling points.
Tell us about the ‘green machine’.
The shippable bins were the first innovation that helped to answer how we collect the balls and bring them to one location. Then came the ‘green machine’ in 2019.
This is a one-of-a-kind machine that can separate the felt from the rubber. That’s when the capability to not just reuse but recycle happened. And so now we're a no-trash hub recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for our innovation and circularity.
What happens after you’ve collected the balls?
Our first question is whether these balls can be reused before they are recycled? About 5% of the tennis balls we receive can be replayed both within tennis via grassroots coaches but also outside of the game.
We are now servicing a whole host of industries before the balls meet the jaws of the green machine. We are helping schools to create quiet classrooms for better learning by providing balls for the legs of chairs.
We are the first organization to provide ‘no trash’ dog balls that allow people to purchase dog toys and then recycle them back to us at no cost.
We work with some industries to do safety testing, for example, we’ve just shipped a truckload of tennis balls to a cart manufacturer for impact testing.
And the possibilities continue to come thick and fast. Tennis balls can even be used to create pain relief for women in labor through sacralist counter-pressure. The potential is huge.
So you give tennis balls not just a second life, but multiple lives?
There’s this whole world of different lives a tennis ball can bounce into after its playing career, and then it bounces back to us again for recycling.
Our goal is not just to be a linear recycler. Our vision is to have a truly no-trash model that pulls multiple items from the supply chain by using the tennis ball responsibly. This way, we take the tennis ball from ten hours of play to a 20-year lifespan during which it helps multiple people, industries and the planet.
What happens to the balls once they are recycled?
A major innovation in the use of our recycled balls is keeping them on the courts. Literally, making new courts from old balls. Laykold have been instrumental in enabling this innovation. They came on board with us a few years ago when we were an early-stage non-profit with a vision to do something about the 154 million tennis balls going to landfill, every year, in the U.S. but without a ready-made solution. (To put that number in context, it would fill 26 jumbo jets. That’s the size of the problem we were facing.)
“Tennis balls can even be used to create pain relief for women in labor through sacralist counter-pressure. The potential is huge.”
How has your partnership with Laykold moved your mission forward?
Laykold brought their R&D capability and commitment to sustainable innovation to the table and helped us get to a truly pioneering solution for tennis. They didn’t mind that there was no ready-made product to add to the courts, they saw that we were close, and they helped us to get there. They developed bespoke court installations to fine-tune the product and continued testing and innovating over three years until we had a formula that could go into any court system. This has been ground-breaking as it meant the innovation can extend beyond the big tournaments like the Canada Open and be made available to clubs and tennis facilities across the country. We’ll start to see Laykold courts with recycled balls as early as spring 2025. People are putting their orders in now.
You recently collected balls at the US Open. What is the impact of that initiative?
Tournaments like the US Open go through a lot of tennis balls, fast. As part of our collaboration with Laykold we’re able to tackle recycling at these big tournaments.
We collected over 13,000 balls at the US Open this year, and we’re signed up for more tournaments next year. 10,000 tennis balls is enough to create a new force reduction Laykold court for a local club which is great for injury prevention to players and the planet. A major innovation in the use of our recycled balls is keeping them on the courts. Literally, making new courts from old balls. Laykold have been instrumental in enabling this innovation. And that is after those same balls have had a second life with a youth coach, and the third life with say, impact testing for an industrial cart.
What impact do you expect to have over an entire year?
We typically recycle 2.7 million balls a year. With Laykold, we’re on track to double that imminently. As we scale, we expect that number to grow exponentially because not only can the balls be repurposed within tennis courts but we’re close to being able to add them to other sports surfaces, including Sport Group’s Rekortan running tracks. With these innovations beyond tennis, we are looking at recycling five to ten million tennis balls annually in the coming years. This would save enough carbon to charge 382,896,768 smartphones.
Our north star is to get reach 50 million tennis balls annually which is a third of the tennis balls used in the US each year.
Do you have ambitions to take your initiative beyond the US?
Absolutely. This is a global issue and we now have a consistent and reliable supply chain of millions of tennis balls and the expertise to repurpose, reuse and recycle them. We already have a footprint in Canada, recycling 100,000 balls. Given Laykold’s global footprint, we’re hoping to work together to expand internationally so that we can serve the global tennis market.
How has the tennis community responded?
Players absolutely love the idea of being able to do something meaningful with their tennis balls at the end of their playing life. We’ve had tennis pros writing to their local tennis community about the fact we’ve cracked this problem they’ve been grappling with for so long. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have come up to me at trade shows to tell me how many balls they have recycled or to show me pictures. It’s almost shocking how passionate people are. No one else has that level of engagement with their trash!
Images provided by Greg Bush & RecycleBalls.
Read more about the innovative partnership between RecycleBalls and Laykold.