Cliff Drysdale Management, the nation’s leading tennis management company announced that they will join an international effort led by Retour Tennis, Project Green Ball and reBounces to encourage tennis ball recycling by players and tennis facility managers and create awareness for the magnitude of the problem created by tennis ball waste.
The Drysdale-managed John Newcombe Country Club in New Braunfels, TX (also the office location of the national headquarters of Cliff Drysdale Tennis) will be the first to showcase a recycling receptacle by ReTour Tennis and spearhead a social media campaign to raise awareness.
“We are pleased to be able to use our voice in the tennis community to help raise awareness for the tennis ball waste problem and how we as enthusiasts of the sport can help the environment by ‘greening our game,’” states Cliff Drysdale Tennis Vice President, Kimberly Arena.
Up to 125 million used tennis balls pile up in American landfills every year. This does not happen because tennis players don't care about recycling (they do), but because there are a couple of factors working against recycling.
1. The general public, and most tennis players, are unaware that the number of discarded tennis balls is astronomical.
2. Tennis balls cannot be processed with regular recycling methods. To recycle them requires a specific technique to separate the material.
Currently there are two organizations taking donated balls for recycling: Project Green Ball (PGB), a non-profit organization that facilitates efforts to donate surfaces based on the recycled balls to organizations servicing people with disabilities or life threatening diseases, and, reBounces, a company that reuses and/or recycles tennis balls (reBounces offers free shipping; no costs - other than a box - will be incurred for sending balls off to be recycled.)
Joining in the sustainability initiative is ReTour Tennis, who have developed an attractive, durable and functional “Ad-In Bin” for tennis facilities to make it convenient for both the guests to recycle their unwanted tennis balls, and for facility managers to empty the receptacles and send the used balls out for recycling.
For those who wish to learn more about tennis ball recycling please visit http://projectgreenball.org