Switzerland’s most important tennis tournament is fully committing to sustainability this year — because every ball played there will now be recycled by us. This makes the Swiss Indoors one of the first major tournaments in the world to take this step.
What do Stan Wawrinka, João Fonseca and Mr. Green have in common? They all met last week at the third-largest ATP indoor tournament in the world: the Swiss Indoors in Basel. Around 6,000 balls were used during the tournament — all of them are now being sent to us for sorting.
Since most of the balls are still playable after the tournament, they are first used for training by the youth of the TIF Tennis Academy at the Swiss Indoors AG headquarters in Allschwil.
After that, we sort the balls together with the socially-oriented BAND cooperative in Bern. Depending on their condition, the balls either go straight to our recycling partners or are given to a tennis school in Poland before eventually being recycled.
And thus the circle closes: old balls are turned into new products that end up back on the tennis court. A selection is already available in our shop: www.tennisballrecycling.ch/shop