Environment

The higher the quality of the ball, the higher the content of natural rubber and wool.  The composition of tennis balls is governed by the International Tennis Federation.

Nylon in the felt is obviously an undesirable material from a sustainability perspective, derived as it is from petroleum, but latex rubber and wool are not without downsides too.   Rubber production is associated with destruction of habitats in tropical regions and wool comes from sheep, a significant source of methane (a potent greenhouse gas).

Finally, conventional tennis balls are pressurised and this requires packaging that preserves this pressurisation up to the point of use; typically, this packaging is made of plastic and metal.

A tennis ball takes a very long time to decompose naturally; estimated at 400 years. Any discarded balls in the wider environment are therefore a problem and cause long term contamination.

The typical lifetime for a tennis ball on the court is very short, especially at the elite level.  The Wimbledon tournament uses 55,000 balls annually, as balls are replaced after the first seven games and every nine games thereafter.  Worldwide, about a billion balls are manufactured, used and discarded each year.

Estimating how many balls are used annually at Highgate is difficult, but is likely to be more than 3000, based on the club’s purchasing history and allowing for the balls bought by individuals.  That’s a big number and one that is hard to reduce in a substantial way.

Options for Recycling and Reuse

Tennis balls are very hard to recycle, in the sense that they are ‘deconstructed’ after use and the separate materials used again, as with glass, metals and some plastics.

Some facilities in the USA can grind down used balls to create a material that can be used for floor surfaces – including tennis courts!  A similar programme in France takes balls from the French Open to create floor coverings for sports halls.  It takes 10,000 balls to cover 100 square meters.

In the UK, some new services have emerged that use proprietary technology to take apart used balls and recover the constituent materials, ie the felt and the rubber.  An example of this kind of company is Circularball (https://hubbauk.com/initiatives/circularball/).  Until recently, another company (Dyuce) operated a similar service, but appears to have swiftly gone out of business, demonstrating how hard it is to persuade clubs to pay for the most sustainable route for taking away and genuinely recycling used tennis balls.

The balls in our club that are collected by Recycaball are used again for tennis, or redistributed to industries that have other applications for them, if sufficiently clean.  (https://recycaball.com/)  Balls that are dirty and/or worn are sent to animal shelters or kennels for dogs to chase.  This collection facility has the benefit of postponing the end of life for some tennis balls, but should not be confused with recycling it.  Incidentally, used balls in Haringey that are disposed of in the residual waste stream will be incinerated at the Edmonton facility and not sent to landfill.  In this way, they are at least generating some electricity.

A simple DIY method of extending the life of tennis balls is to buy a ball pressuriser, costing approximately £30.  This allows the re-pressurisation of 3 or 4 balls and which will restore the ball’s bounce to nearly its original state.

 So, what can we do to reduce this problem our sport is responsible for?

Realistically, the only option is to extend the useful life of the balls we use.  The sport requires that the tennis ball is manufactured in a particular way and so there is no prospect of a manufacturer using alternative materials that can be easily recycled.  The re-use of balls via Recycaball is a worthwhile option, but is unlikely to result in an individual ball being used again more than once.  This process will not extend the ball’s life indefinitely.

Balls are typically discarded when their bounce fades and become unsuitable for a satisfactory game of tennis.  Deciding when this point has been reached is subjective and opinions will vary.  The bounce of a conventional ball begins to diminish immediately it is taken out of the pressurised can and by the end of a match is almost certainly measurably inferior to its initial state.  Even when taken out of a can and unused, a ball’s internal pressure will decline.  This is where a ball pressuriser can be helpful in restoring, at least partially, a ball’s pressure and keeping three or four balls in a better state for social play and training.

An alternative approach is to use balls that have been designed as unpressurised, so their bounce remains the same over their usable lifetime.  This is achieved by making them with a ‘stiffer’ shell, which can make striking such balls feel a little ‘heavier’ and some players report a detrimental effect on their arm muscles and joints.

Of those balls on the market of this type, club users have found that Tretorn ‘X’ balls perform the best.  The Thursday afternoon social doubles session used some of these balls over a six month period before they became too worn for further use.  That is quite an impressive lifetime as compared with a conventional ball and more than compensates for their higher cost.  Although we have no hard data for a strict comparison, it is highly likely that the useful lifetime of an ‘’X’ ball is substantially more than that of a conventional ball that is re-used through a re-pressurisation process, as with Recycaball.

There is likely be a reluctance to use ‘X’ balls in matches and for people playing at a higher level, but there seems no reason why they cannot be used for social tennis, ladder matches and practice, where players are comfortable with them.  At their end of useful life, they should not be placed in the Recycaball bin, however.  These balls are unpressurised and therefore it makes no sense to re-pressurise them.

In summary, for those club members wishing to buy and use tennis balls in the least unsustainable way, they should:

• extend the life of balls as long as possible by using a ball pressuriser and using the Recycaball collection service; and/or
• consider playing with balls of the Tretorn ‘X’ type as an alternative to conventional balls.

If enough people were to follow these principles, we might begin to reduce the total amount of balls used and discarded each year by players at our club.  As observed at the beginning of this note, tennis balls come with an environmental impact that is unavoidable and one we can only reduce slightly, not eliminate.