If you’re a pickleball player in Nebraska, you may have seen our broken pickleball recycling boxes at your favorite courts.
By placing the boxes at popular pickleball courts, we are encouraging players to donate their broken pickleballs to our cause. In fact, you may have landed on this page after scanning the QR code on the box!
We’re collecting pickleballs from these boxes regularly and each pickleball is carefully cleaned and repurposed or recycled.
Our goal in collecting and repurposing or recycling pickleballs is to reduce the number of plastic pickleballs that end up in the landfill (or recycling centers because let’s face it - only around 5% of plastic is actually recycled).
Plastic pickleballs in the landfill take hundreds of years to degrade. Garbage is regularly dropped while in transport from the bin to the landfill, as well. Over time, this results in plastic from pickleballs in the oceans, which just adds to the already drastic number of microplastic particles in the oceans.
Then, the pickleballs break down from sunlight and water erosion, dropping microplastics into the ocean and the water supply.
Fish ingest microplastics and we eat those fish. This results in microplastics in our bodies, which is terribly unhealthy for us.
It’s all related.
Sadly, by 2050, the World Wildlife Federation expects there to be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Yes, you read that right.
Why should I help?
As a pickleball community, we are in a unique position to help make an impact on the world's plastic pollution.
Can we completely solve the problem? No.
But can we put a dent in the problem and make sure pickleballs are never to blame for plastic pollution by working together as a pickleball community?
Absolutely we can.
Help us reduce the amount of plastic that pickleballers send to the landfills by donating your broken pickleballs to Service Pickleball.
If you're interested in putting a Service Pickleball recycle bin at your local courts, sign up for email updates in the form below!
Through email, we'll keep you updated on the ambassador program we're building to provide Service Pickleball recycle bins to local courts all across the country.
Start saving your broken pickleballs now!
And if you have a stockpile of broken pickleballs already and are interested in recycling them responsibly, let us know!
Support the Service Pickleball movement by checking out our shop where 100% of profits are reinvested in more recycle bins.
✌️ Much love,
Skylar