East Glos Club in Cheltenham is leading the way for sustainability in sport with an innovative new tennis ball recycling scheme.
The club is taking part in a pilot scheme from Dyuce — the UK and Ireland's only used tennis ball recycling solution — to reduce the club's impact on the environment.
According to Dyuce, the average tennis ball spends just 6 hours on the court and up to 300 years in landfill, with over 400 million tennis balls being thrown away around the world each year.
In a bid to bring this number down and make tennis more sustainable for its members, balls placed into the Dyuce bins at East Glos Club will be recycled.
The lightweight bins are designed to be attractive, as well as easy to lift and empty, with automatic collections bookable using a QR code on Dyuce's collection boxes.
The rubber salvaged from the balls will be used to make athletic and equestrian footwear, helping to reduce reliance on virgin rubber.
It's not the first move East Glos Club has made to improve sustainability — the club established its own environmental sustainability policy back in 2021; introduced a sustainability working group to increase focus on this important issue last year; and has signed up to the Sport England 'Going for Green' pledge.
It is installing LED floodlights on its courts and planting wildflowers in meadows and planters around the club, with plans to install solar panels and EV charging points in the future.
East Glos Club's operations manager, Steve Wigg, said: 'Our members change their tennis and padel balls frequently, which equates to thousands of balls each year.
'This innovative new scheme will enable us to play our part in reducing the amount of waste which goes to landfill.'
East Glos Club offers tennis, squash, padel and racketball, as well as professional coaching for adults and children, with a variety of annual membership options — including memberships for families.
