When Prem Kamasani saw his tennis coach throwing away hundreds of used tennis balls after practice, he wondered whether they could be put to better use. Instead of letting them go to waste, the high school student decided to collect them. That small effort eventually grew into ‘BallBack,’ a student-run nonprofit that has built a nationwide network to collect and recycle discarded tennis balls. As reported by American media company Local Profile, Kamasani is a senior at Flower Mound High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. He noticed that used tennis balls were regularly being thrown into dumpsters, even though they could be reused or recycled through specialised programmes. Tennis balls can take around 400 years to break down and generally cannot be placed in regular curbside recycling bins. Kamasani asked his coach if he could collect the balls instead. What began as a single collection effort in Texas became the starting point for BallBack.
How BallBack gives old tennis balls a second life
BallBack provides free collection bins to schools, tennis courts and clubs. When the bins fill up, student volunteers collect the balls and send them to recycling partners, including RecycleBalls. The organisation also works with other partners to find ways to reuse balls that are still suitable for use. According to the official website of BallBack, balls that can no longer be used on the court are sent for processing and ground into rubber crumbs. This material can be used for new tennis court surfaces, playground padding and equestrian arena footing.Balls that still have some life left in them can be donated to youth tennis programmes and schools that need equipment. Animal shelters can also use them as enrichment toys. This approach allows the organisation to direct balls to different uses instead of treating every discarded ball as waste.
From one school project to a nationwide network
Photo credit: ballback.org
BallBack has grown well beyond its beginnings in Flower Mound. According to the organisation’s website, it has recycled or repurposed more than 160,000 tennis balls, with 31 student chapter leaders working across 16 states. It also has more than 310 members and over 47 partner facilities with more than 55 partner tennis facilities, reflecting the network’s continued expansion. It has also raised $12,050 in funding to support its work.The model depends on students organising collections in their own communities. Chapter leaders work with local courts, schools and clubs, arrange pickups and help get the collected balls to the appropriate recycling or reuse partners. This allows the project to expand to new areas without relying on a single central collection point.
A world-record attempt is next
Kamasani is also looking to take the initiative further. In the video transcript shared by The Indic Pulse, BallBack is described as planning a world-record attempt in the spring to recycle the largest number of tennis balls in one week. The proposed attempt would build on the organisation’s existing collection network and its efforts to keep used tennis balls out of landfills. What began with one student asking to save a pile of discarded tennis balls has developed into a wider effort involving students, schools and tennis facilities across the United States. Through BallBack, balls that would otherwise be thrown away can instead become material for sports surfaces, equipment for young players or toys for animals in shelters.
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