I spend a lot of time on a tennis court. As a competitive player, training and competing are part of my daily routine, and tennis is something I absolutely love. Tennis balls were always just part of the background. We opened a can, played for a few hours, they would lose their bounce and then we replaced them. That cycle felt normal. I never questioned it or stopped to think what happened after I was done using them.
Until I did.
The Environmental Cost of Tennis
After a typical practice session, I looked over to the side of the court and saw a pile of dead, used balls left behind—what I would have considered “unusable.” They were all destined to be thrown away without a second thought. I realized that every one of those balls had been used by players like me. I wasn’t just observing an environmental problem — I was contributing to it. That moment changed the way I viewed waste in my sport.
Tennis balls are made of rubber and felt – materials that take hundreds of years to decompose. Because they’re pressurized, they’re also difficult to recycle, which means the vast majority end up in landfills. As someone who goes through hundreds of balls each year, I couldn’t ignore the fact that my sport, as much as I loved it, had an environmental cost.
That realization led to a simple but uncomfortable question: What could I do about it?
The Birth of BounceBack
I wasn’t going to solve the global problem of sports waste, but I wanted to try and do my bit. I wanted to start closer to home. I began by collecting the tennis balls I personally used and challenged myself to repurpose them instead of throwing them away once they were “done”. That was the beginning of BounceBack—a small sustainability project rooted in accountability.
At first, BounceBack was experimental. I didn’t know exactly what I was building or where it would lead. I started testing ways to turn used tennis balls into functional furniture, experimenting with stools, benches, and chairs. The goal went beyond simple repurposing. I wanted to turn an invisible problem into a visible, tangible solution — something people could see, question, and interact with.
The process was harder than I expected. Designing pieces that were stable, durable, and visually striking needed a lot of trial and error. Progress was slow, and much of the work happened quietly, without feedback or recognition. That slowness taught me an important lesson: meaningful sustainability work rarely looks impressive at the beginning. It often starts with small steps and a willingness to keep going.
As I documented the project online, something unexpected happened. Teammates began asking questions. Younger players were surprised to learn how quickly tennis balls are discarded. Some people even offered me their used balls to repurpose. Without planning it, BounceBack became a conversation starter. It showed me that awareness doesn’t always require large campaigns — sometimes it begins with making a solution tangible.
One of my more recent prototypes, which I call The Impact Bench, explores the balance between environmental impact and aesthetic design. This bench uses 165 recycled tennis balls — the most I’ve used in any single piece. This time, I wasn’t aiming for subtlety. I wanted the volume to be obvious. The bench is intentionally dense and heavy, designed to visually represent how much waste accumulates through sport, and how that waste can be reimagined as design.
Parting Shot
For me, sustainability isn’t just about finding perfect solutions. It’s about questioning systems we’re part of and taking responsibility where we can. BounceBack hasn’t eliminated tennis ball waste, and it wasn’t meant to. Instead, it has changed how I approach consumption, design, and problem-solving—not just in tennis, but in everyday life.
Being a young athlete has given me access to spaces where waste is normalized and rarely questioned. BounceBack is my way of pushing back against that norm, starting with myself. It is proof that sustainability doesn’t always begin with large-scale initiatives. Sometimes, it begins with noticing a problem you contribute to — and choosing not to ignore it.
