Short Tennis: Solving the Sustainability of Sports
Photo: Alison Day
Although I have been playing tennis all my life, I particularly admired it during the pandemic because it is one of the few outdoor and social sports that I can play with my Columbia University classmates. Our leisure game in the riverside park tennis courts in the morning was great, but I can’t help but hope that we throw away the old tennis balls we are using and buy new ones because it will make our gathering more exciting.
As students majoring in environmental science and policy, we are very reluctant to throw them in the trash when we can still get some usefulness from them. Unlike us, most tennis players always buy a can of new balls in each game, and then discard the used balls after only a few hours of playing, and they rarely think about what they will do when they leave the court. what happened.
Although major sports events have made great strides in improving environmental friendliness, such as this year’s Tokyo Olympics Using recycled electronic products to make medals, using 100% renewable energy, and offsetting the inevitable greenhouse gas emissions, the sustainability of individual sports is still lacking.
For example, the pristine landscape of the golf course is notorious Disrupting wildlife habitat And it needs a lot of water and pesticides to maintain it.In addition, the Composite material Among sports equipment, such as ski poles, bicycles, and bows and arrows, have a large carbon footprint and are difficult to recycle.
In tennis, the ball is an obstacle to making the sport truly sustainable.
Tennis production is not the most environmentally friendly process.High visibility yellow Felt coating The ball is usually wool and nylon, This is a petroleum-based product.The plantation used to produce the rubber found in the core may threaten plants and animals Biodiversity. and supply chain Related to manufacturing can take the ball from start to finish to 50,000 miles and travel through 11 different countries.
Tennis is basically designed as a non-biodegradable, disposable, and disposable product, especially at the professional level.
In the production process, tennis balls are full of Compressed air, Which makes the ball elastic, and then packaged in a pressurized plastic tank to maintain the elasticity of the ball. Once the jar is opened and the ball starts to be hit, it will slowly lose pressure and thus lose its bounce.The felt coating on the ball also gets fluffy Each shot increases the resistance and reduces the speed of the ball.
In professional competitions, new ball Needed after a certain number of games, because they will be hit hard, occasionally than 140 miles per hour. At the U.S. Open, one of the tennis Grand Slam tournaments, this resulted in approximately 70,000 balls Used in a two-week competition.
Most casual players can use the same set of balls for multiple games before the ball degenerates to the extent that it affects the accuracy and speed of shooting. But even most novice players can feel when the ball is dead and throw it away.
The destination of the end of life 125 million tennis balls Sometimes the bottoms of pet shelters or walkers are sold and discarded in the United States each year, but most end up in landfills.Although the disposable plastic tennis tank is technically Recyclable, In fact, the probability of recycling cans in the United States is Not very good.
So what can a waste-conscious tennis player do? More importantly, what can tennis tournament organizers do to reduce the waste generated by tennis tournaments?
Wilson Sporting Goods is a company trying to solve these sustainability and waste issues. In 2019, Wilson launched Trinity Tennis, It claims to be “the world’s first environmentally conscious high-performance tennis ball”. Triniti ball by New type Rubber cores that do not require pressurized air and are sold in unpressurized paper sleeves. This new design means that the freshness and elasticity of the ball is four times that of the pressurized ball, and generally speaking, Comment Yes .
In addition to better-designed balls, other solutions to keep tennis balls away from landfills include ball pressurizers, which can store used balls in a High pressure pipe So that they lose pressure more slowly, or machine Fill up with gas and restore some rebound of the ball. There is even a company that makes tennis courts from scratch, Recycling ball.
Although tennis is physically only a small part of the total landfills in the United States, if event organizers such as the International Olympic Committee want to claim that their games are environmentally sustainable, they must still address their environmental impact . They need to consider all aspects of the game, all the way to tennis.
Professional tennis tournaments can lead this transition to a low-waste sport. If policies to reduce waste can be adopted at the professional level, such as using longer-lasting balls and giving new lives to dead balls, it may affect the behavior of players at all levels of games and skills.
This trickle-down effect of using a more sustainable and durable tennis ball may mean that one day I can go to my local family sports store and buy a sleeve of Triniti ball, which actually lasts longer and lasts longer than the few before dawn. My classmates meet.
Nothing beats it better than the pop and hiss when opening a new can of tennis balls, or the strong chemical smell that now associates neon yellow in my mind, but the ephemeral nature of tennis means me and the number The sport that millions of other people love is just “t environmentally sustainable. If innovation in sports technology and leaders who set the tone for professional sports can allow us to reach the point where we don’t harm the planet in the name of friendly competition, I’d love to Give up these feelings.
Allison Day is MPA Environmental Science and Policy Program, Class of 2021.
If you are interested in learning more about the MPA-ESP program, please contact Assistant Director Stephanie Hoyt (sah2239@columbia.edu).
