Tennis has a fluffy yellow problem that most players don't think about when they open cans of fresh balls or when referees frequently ask for "new balls, please" at U_S_ Open matches.
This harsh reality in an age of heightened environmental awareness has led ball manufacturers, recyclers and the game's global governing body to seek solutions, and prompted sustainability campaigners to post online posts raising the alarm and asking: Are tennis balls a disaster for the planet? ?"Tennis balls, like many other objects, are indestructible, which means they hold up very well to mechanical processing," said Nickolas J. Themelis, director of Columbia University's Earth Engineering Center. “But take a useful item that lasts forever and say people shouldn’t use it because it lasts forever? This is nonsense."Themelis and other experts note that tennis balls make up just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of tons of garbage produced each year, and that keys, with all the hard-to-recycle materials, are finding ways to extend their useful life through other uses and taking care of them When finally disposed of, ensure that they do not end up in the environment."Anyone who would say you shouldn't play tennis because of the tennis balls is misinformed," said Jason Quinn, director of Colorado State University's Sustainability Research Laboratory. “As far as impact goes, it’s a blip on the radar. ...And there are things you can do to recycle and repurpose tennis balls to reduce the impact."This includes efforts by nonprofits and others to go beyond just using old balls as dog toys and chair bottoms. This involves collecting balls in bulk and grinding them into material used to make products such as the flooring for horse arenas and - in perfect symmetry - tennis courts.But experts and environmentalists doubt these initiatives are viable enough to remedy the situation, saying such efforts fail to address the underlying problem of the lack of fully recyclable tennis balls, nor the factors that make balls particularly troublesome.Topping the list is the tennis ball design, which has remained essentially unchanged since the introduction of pressure balls in the 1920s and consists of a felt cover bonded to a hollow, air-filled rubber core.The greatest obstacle to recycling the rubber in the ball is the difficulty in removing the felt from the rubber core, as the cover is held in place by the strong adhesive when struck by a racquet. And the felt is also a problem: a mix of wool and nylon that cannot be recycled.In addition, the core of most top-class tennis balls - such as the Wilson U.S. Open extra-duty model being played in Flushing Meadows - made only from newly made, new rubber, which campaigners say is causing deforestation of rubber trees in the Amazon."It's true that virgin rubber is used because of the performance specifications required of the best in the world," said Jason Collins, general manager of global racquet sports at Wilson Sporting Goods. “Other tennis balls in our product line can and do contain recycled rubber.”Another issue in terms of carbon footprint is where most of the balls are made - Thailand and China - as those balls have to be shipped thousands of miles to get to North America and Europe, where the majority of tennis is played being played in the world.To address these issues, the International Tennis Federation operates, which certifies tennis balls and sanctions competitions around the world. A technical working group was set up last year, made up of manufacturers, officials from other tennis federations and recycling companies, with ambitious goals:Is there a way to design a fully recyclable ball? What abilities do balls have at different levels of play? Can the ITF use its rulemaking power to keep balls in play longer in competitions, which would result in fewer balls being used? At Grand Slam events, do balls need to be replaced after the first seven games and every nine games thereafter? Could this be extended to 11 or 13 games? And could such changes aimed at using fewer balls be rolled out to all players for longer?“We want to try to find ways to make consumer behavior and the product more sustainable,” said Jamie Capel-Davies, the ITF's technical director, who works in the association's laboratory in London.“The overall strategy is to use the waste hierarchy,” Davies said. “First of all, we are trying to reduce the number of balls used. Then we reuse the balls as best we can. Recycling comes third. And then disposing of balls is at the bottom, the most undesirable thing.”Positive signs being investigated include efforts to re-pressurize “flat” balls in bulk to bring them back to life, a solution that does not deal with worn out felt. A Dutch company's development of a ball made from 30% old tennis balls (any more would apparently affect playability). And Wilson introduces its Triniti ball, a still-pressurized model with a sturdier core that leaks less and a harder felt that's designed to last at least four uses without losing bounce or fluff.“While there is not yet a fully recyclable tennis ball that meets the performance needs of elite athletes, we are proactively innovating for the future,” said Wilson’s Collins.On the positive side of the recycling front, nonprofits are taking on the task of collecting and reusing tennis balls, most notably Vermont-based RecycleBalls, which says it is on track to collect 3 million tennis balls from the U.S. and Canada this year .ReycleBalls distributes collection boxes at hundreds of tennis clubs, city parks, colleges and tournaments, where used balls can be sent prepaid to the organization's warehouse, where they are sorted for various uses.Some are sold as dog toys or for the bottom of chairs, others are ground up whole with the felt to be sold as flooring for horse arenas, and still others are sent to a highly specialized, patent-pending machine that strips the felt into rubber and grinds the rubber into grains of different sizes, which are processed into a cushioning layer by the tennis court surfacing company Laykold.Additionally, other uses for the granules are being explored, such as use in mulch, building materials such as stucco and siding, and even furniture components.“We believe in multiple lives for tennis balls,” said Erin Cunningham, CEO of RecycleBalls. She acknowledged that her organization could reuse many more balls if there were more companies willing to incorporate the rubber into their products.“We don’t want to just pick up tennis balls and leave them in storage,” Cunningham said. “We have to make sure that at the end there is actually a demand for recycled products.”At the United States Tennis Association offices under the stands at Louis Armstrong Stadium this week, a row of RecycleBalls containers sat in the hallway, quickly filled with U.S. Open balls and immediately sent out for reuse. Other balls from the event will be used for the second time at USTA clinics and training centers across the country, and still others will be individually packaged and sold at US Open gift shops for $10 each.For the vast majority of balls that aren't so lucky, Columbia University's Themelis believes their final resting place should be not landfills but incinerators that burn trash to generate electricity. More widely used in Europe and China, Themelis says they process only about 10% of the waste in the U.S., where they have come under scrutiny over emissions concerns.Opponents of such facilities say that when it comes to finding solutions to hard-to-recycle items like tennis balls, it is better to innovate rather than burn them.“A big part of this is igniting the will to change,” said Claire Arkin, spokeswoman for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. "And that really means that the companies behind these products have to consider the whole life cycle."“We have seen countless examples of innovation when it comes to redesigning products, and tennis balls are long overdue for such an overhaul.”
