Yellow, Fuzzy and Flat
Pop open a can of tennis balls before a match. Open a new can for the next match, and the next. About 125 million tennis balls are sold in the United States each year, and eventually all are dead and unplayable. Some find new life on the bottom of walkers or in the mouths of energetic dogs, but a vast majority end up in landfills.
The tennis ball’s traditional trajectory, however, might be changing. The new hardcourts at CourtSense at Tenafly Racquet Club in New Jersey feature an underneath layer of cushioning made from thousands of recycled tennis balls.
“It is highly complex, and it took six years from conception to the completion of these courts,” said Franz Fasold, owner of Ace Surfaces and the man credited with spearheading the effort. “But we’ve shown that this is a credible effort, not just fairy dust.”
The first American success with recycled tennis balls was in 2011, when Ben Soloway, a high school tennis player in Massachusetts, wondered what happened to all those balls after tournaments. Inspired by the French Tennis Federation, which began Opération Balle Jaune (Yellow Ball) in 2009, he created Project Green Ball with his father, Scott.
The Soloways created a nonprofit group and began soliciting dead balls from tennis clubs. They had to rely on donors to cover the shipping costs, but by 2014 they had collected 200,000 balls.
The French federation annually grinds up 1.5 million balls into granules that are added to resins for sports surfaces throughout the country. Similarly, Scott Soloway persuaded IGK Equestrian, a company that makes products for horse facilities, to use recycled balls in turf for three equestrian arenas, which included a therapeutic riding program and a group working with people with developmental disabilities.
After the equestrian company shifted directions, Soloway discovered Ace Surfaces and its partnership with reBounces, as well as Advanced Polymer Technology and its Laykold surface.
To read the full story, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/sports/tennis/yellow-fuzzy-and-flat-where-do-recycled-tennis-balls-go.html?_r=0.