Tennis balls may take 400 years to decompose; Environmentalists, game's governing body clueless
tennis ball and about 330 million tennis balls are made worldwide every year. About 100,000 tennis balls are used every year in Grand Slam tournaments. It has perplexed tennis lovers as well as environment experts. What should be done? Should one stop playing tennis because the balls cannot be decomposed?
Tennis governing body scrambles
The ball makers, recyclers and the tennis governing body are scrambling for solutions considering the problems created for the environment. Nickolas J. Themelis, director of Columbia University's Earth Engineering Center admits that tennis balls are made to be indestructible and they are very resistant to mechanical processes like many other objects.
‘Nonsense not to play tennis’
He adds that it is nonsense to not use something because they are indestructible. He also said that tennis balls make up a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of tons of garbage produced every year. Similarly, Jason Quinn, director of Colorado State University’s Sustainability Research Laboratory said that anybody who would say that one should not play tennis because tennis balls can not be decomposed is misinformed.
Tennis balls reused
Some non-government organizations collect the balls in bulk and grind them down into material that can be used to make products including the footing for horse arenas and tennis courts. But many experts though appreciate the efforts being made by these organizations point out such efforts don’t address the problem of a lack of a fully recyclable tennis ball.
Problems in recycling tennis balls
The design of tennis balls has not changed since 1920 when the technique to make pressurized balls was discovered. The ball consists of a felt covering glued to a hollow,
