Mission

Project Green Ball is a non-profit sustainability initiative to coordinate innovative 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.

Check out our segment on Channel 5 News!

Summary:

Project Green Ball's goal is to remove tennis balls from the waste stream and provide social benefit to people in need.  We do this by collecting tennis balls from clubs, tournaments, schools, teams, associations, and individuals.  Once the balls are collected we send them to an equestrian turf manufacturer. Together, IGK Equestrian and Project Green Ball have developed an equestrian turf based on ground tennis balls.  Once we deliver 200,000 balls, the manufacturer will donate an equestrian turf to a therapeutic riding program for people with disabilities.  Our goal is to donate as many balls as possible to the manufacturer, resulting in the donation of many equestrian turfs to therapeutic riding centers. 

Accomplishments:

• PGB has collected over 145,000 balls to date. 
• PGB is the largest recycler of tennis balls in the United States
• PGB facilitated the donation of an equestrian turf through a UPS grant to EquiCenter. 
• Wilson Sporting Goods has gotten behind PGB and supported the shipment of nearly 40,000 balls.  
  
• PGB currently has 62 organizations nation wide which have donated tennis balls and hosted 20 collection bins.
• PGB has 8 volunteers and 4 ambassadors.
• PGB has won 4 grants totaling in $3,500 and 2 awards, including a MassRecycle Innovation Award.
• PGB has filed for 501(c)(3) status.

Impact:

300 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 was no solution to recycling tennis balls until now. Project Green Ball removes tennis balls from the waste stream by incorporating them into ball-based turfs.

FAQs:

Please visit our FAQ page on our website: Project Green Ball FAQ.

What your donation is going to:

The more funds we raise, the more balls we will receive.  All funds raised through this project will be used to support the shipment of tennis balls. Currently, shipping is inhibiting our success.  We constantly have people calling us from all over the world asking how they can ship their balls and whether we will be able to pay for shipping.  Shipping can be very expensive, and often times we lose donations because the donors do not have funds to ship the balls.

We are aiming for $500.  If we don't reach this goal, we'll still use all of the money to ship tennis balls.  Ultimately, we are grateful for each dollar and any amount of money will significantly benefit our project. 

Other ways you can help:

If you can't support our project financially right now, that is all right.  You can help in a number of different ways.

1. Spread the word! Not very many people know about PGB.  Help us by "liking," commenting, or sharing our Facebook Page.

2. Volunteer! We currently have 8 volunteers and 4 ambassadors from all over the United States.  If you would like to volunteer your time, reach out to us at info@projectgreenball.com.

3. Donate tennis balls! If you are interested in donating, send your balls to our turf manufacturer.

        North Brook Farms

        89 York St.

        Auburn, NY 13021

        Attn: Peter Kyle

The Process:

1. Ground tennis balls

2. Pre-mixture of ground tennis balls and IGK Equestrian's soil

3. Then the balls and soil are fully mixed to create IGK Equestrian's "Grand Slam Footing"

4. And finally the footing is laid out in the arena and ready for use

Perks:

To thank you for your generous donations, we're offering some perks we hope you will enjoy.  We have found that many supporters of Project Green Ball enjoy spreading the word about Project Green Ball. Most of our perks were created with that in mind.

***We'll ship all items free of charge within the United States.

***If you live internationally, please manually add an addition $10 to the price of the perk you want. We will do the matching at the end of the campaign. If you forget to pay for shipping... Don't worry! Just click the contribute now button at the top of the page and manually enter $10.

$10 donation: A thank you video from the founders, Ben and Scott.

$25 donation: A Project Green Ball wristband and a thank you video. 

$50 donation: Two Project Green Ball bumper stickers and a thank you video.

$75 donation: A Project Green Ball t-shirt with our logo and a thank you video.

$100 donation: 

A personalized video and the Project Green Ball T-shirt shown above. 

Who is behind Project Green Ball?:

A father and son with a problem.  We play a lot of tennis and we always have a hopper full of tennis balls.  But when those balls are dead and unplayable, it is a very sad thing to throw them in the trash and know that they will be filling up a landfill.  So one day, Ben (the son) said to Scott (the dad), there has to be a way to recycle tennis balls.

That’s when this quixotic quest began and we considered options for laying to rest used tennis balls – crushed and stuffed into beanbag chairs (too heavy), embedded in buoys (not enough balls killed and didn’t have an interest in the industry), construction (maybe?), extracting the chemicals and reselling (not enough value), mats (maybe in the future), rubberized asphalt (maybe, but probably not enough balls killed)…. You get the idea – lots of trial and error.

The real breakthrough we were killing time waiting for Ben's sister to finish up at her school.  While looking at the school’s equestrian center we noticed the turf had odd stuff in it.  Upon closer inspection we determined that stuff turned out to be pieces of rubber and different kinds of fabric.  Upon further research, we learned that every manufacturer has its own turf recipe and each seems to include rubber and fiber – exactly the ingredients included in a tennis ball – and the facilities are big which can result in the dignified burial of lots of balls.  After a lot more hard work, we finally thought we had something.

Other pictures of Project Green Ball:

Rumsey Hall High School collection bin.

PGB collection event at the Tennis Hall of Fame tennis tournament.

Americorps helping run a collection event.