Project Green Ball

recycling programs for used tennis balls and to donate surfaces based on the recycled balls to organizations servicing people with disabilities or life threatening diseases. Three hundred million tennis balls are manufactured worldwide each year (with over 125 million used in the US) and tons of balls are discarded into landfills each year. The balls decompose very slowly and take up space in landfills producing methane gas and contributing to global warming. Everyone is aware of reuse applications for tennis balls - bottoms of chairs and walkers and as toys for dogs. But there is a limit to how many balls each year can be put to this purpose. And, even if reused, ultimately these balls still remain in the waste stream and wind up in landfills. There is no industry solution to recycling tennis balls. Project Green Ball Overview

Project Green Ball is devoted to finding innovative means to recycle used tennis balls and we need your support and balls to make this a success. We support a variety of recycling programs, some of which result in the donation of surfaces based on recycled balls to organizations servicing people with disabilities or life threatening diseases. So far we have collected over 250,000 balls from over 90 tennis facilities, clubs, schools and camps and hundreds of individuals and have developed relationships with manufacturers for the recycling of tennis balls into second surfaces. Our oldest program is the recycling of tennis balls into equestrian turf. For every 200,000 balls we provide to our turf manufacturer they will donate a riding surface to a program for people with disabilities. The first donated surface was installed at the Shared Living Collaborative in Merrimac, MA in August, 2015 for therapeutic riding for people with disabilities. The surface contains over 100,000 dead balls. This the third riding surface that has been installed. The other two are both used for therapeutic riding as well - the first is at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA and was paid for by the school and the second was installed at EquiCenter in upstate NY and was paid for by a UPS Foundation grant that Project Green Ball helped to facilitate. Our newest program is tennis courts made with recycled balls as a component of the cushioned court underlayment. About 1.5 years ago we started working with Ace Surfaces and Applied Polymer Technologies to develop the cushioned mat based system with recycled tennis balls for tennis courts. We provided over 25,000 balls in connection with these research and development efforts. At the end of August, 2015 the first 8 tennis ball based recycled tennis courts were installed in Tenafly, NJ. Similar to the equestrian turf program, once 200,000 balls are delivered to the court manufacturer, they will donate either a tennis court or a sports surface to a non-profit organization. You can learn more about these programs on our website at www.projectgreenball.org. How You Fit In

As Project Green Ball is a community sustainability initiative, we need your help. Specifically, we need your used tennis balls and your ideas as to how to recycle balls. We are interested in establishing relationships with logistics providers (so the program can be rolled out to tennis clubs), as well as academies, teams, tennis clubs and others interested in promoting this sustainability initiative. If you want to help, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we can discuss opportunities. We look forward to working with you to make the world a cleaner and better place to live! And to turning our collection efforts into tangible results for people with disabilities and life threatening diseases.

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