LA Teens Collect 22,000 Sports Balls in New World Recycling Record

Thought Question: What's something you see wasted or thrown away too often, and what could you turn it into instead?

Anyone seeking to break a world record in recycling sports balls has a mountain to climb. It's made of 22,000 tennis and pickle balls that weigh 2,675 pounds. 

A group of Los Angeles (LA) teens set the first Guinness World Record (GWR) for the most sports balls collected in a day. They broke the record on September 19. They piled up enough balls to fill three dump trucks. The 13 teens set the record during a weekend event in Santa Monica. They are members of Another Bounce, a nonprofit. The teens founded the group.  

"Hundreds of millions of these balls end up in our landfills, in our waterways, and on our local public beaches," LA City Councilwoman Traci Park told the Santa Monica Daily Press. "I am so impressed with the work that they're doing to remove these from the waste stream."

The rubber in these balls takes 400 years to decompose.

The event featured LA Rams cheerleaders, pickleball matches, and live music. It drew donors from around the area. Each received a free ice cream for every bag of used balls they turned in. Another Bounce staged the Santa Monica event to compile same-day donations with balls they had collected since February. The group set up collection bins at LA courts. Donors from elsewhere also sent in balls. The teens were helped by a California nonprofit called Habits of Waste.

“This began as a school project around social entrepreneurship where one of my friends was frustrated with the amount of tennis and pickleballs that were being discarded each week during his lessons,” group member Milan Ramesh told the Daily Press. “We came together and created Another Bounce to make change.”  

The balls will be recycled into new pickleballs and other products. The products include court surfacing, piping, and plant pots.

Gif of tennis balls from Giphy.