Renewaball: Serving Sustainability

The world’s first circular tennis and padel ball is a win for athletics and the environment.

By Hannah Blume

The lifecycle of a tennis or padel ball follows a cut-and-dried path: The ball is born, spends a short while propelling across the court, and eventually meets one of two fates — landfill or incineration. Regardless, it doesn’t decay.

Sometimes the ball serves another purpose after its metaphorical death. It might end up going between the slobbering mouth of a dog and its owner, or it could be recycled to create the flooring for a court, playground, or turf. These initiatives only provide temporary solutions though. The old ball is tossed after one too many bite marks, and the flooring wears down.

When discussing sustainability, tennis balls are not usually top of mind. In the U.S. alone, about 125 million of them end up in a landfill — and that’s after they’ve already released 1.2 pounds of carbon emissions per ball from sourcing to shipping, according to Stanford University. Tasked with helping the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament become more sustainable, Renewaball stepped up to the challenge.

Founded in 2020 in Amsterdam and certified as a B Corp in 2023, Renewaball is working to eliminate the environmental impacts of tennis and padel balls. “A real leader wants to make an impact,” Renewaball co-founder and CEO Hélène Hoogeboom says. “That’s the main goal.”

The process of recycling old tennis and padel balls did not seem possible previously. The leading issue was that the pure partitions of rubber and felt on the original tennis or padel ball could not easily be separated. These materials are glued together, making it difficult to properly pull them apart, but Renewaball found a solution that opened the door for others to do the same, and its circular balls are an important breakthrough in sustainability.

Renewaballs are made of recycled materials collected from used tennis and padel balls as well as locally sourced, organic wool to create the felt. They are 100% recyclable and are packaged in fully recyclable pressurized tubes. Wool from Norway and Yorkshire is used to develop the felt, and the balls contain no polyester, nylon, or microplastics. Every time a traditional tennis ball is hit, microplastics are spread throughout the air, negatively impacting the environment. Renewaball avoids this with its biodegradable felt.

While the majority of tennis and padel balls are made in South East Asia, where Hoogeboom questions employees’ working conditions, Renewaball’s production takes place in Western Europe in a small factory that it works closely with.

Having an affordable product is also important to the company. “It should be on the same price level as our less sustainable competitors,” Hoogeboom notes. “Otherwise, we don’t solve the problem at all.”

The circular tennis and padel balls need to perform well too. Renewaballs are certified by the International Tennis Federation and the International Padel Federation. Its products are easily compared to traditional tennis and padel balls in terms of how they play, although they play slower on a wet court since natural felt does not absorb as much moisture as traditional balls. Plus, Renewaball padel balls last about twice as long as any other padel ball due to their felt being woven, not punched.

With the rise of sustainability efforts, circular balls have become more popular.

Hoogeboom believes the support Renewaball has received from clubs and players has been crucial to its success. “You can only solve problems and be more sustainable if you collaborate,” Hoogeboom says. “There is no competition in collaboration.”