Before founding BallBack, Prem Kamasani was a middle schooler retrieving stray tennis balls from the shrubbery behind his local courts. His dad saw little reason to buy new ones when there were perfectly usable balls waiting to be found.
Years later, Prem saw his high-school tennis coach preparing to throw away around 400 balls. He asked to take them home, without knowing what he would do with them. Finding somewhere to recycle that first collection became the beginning of a student-led network.
In this interview with Unsustainable Magazine, Prem explains how BallBack grew, what happens after a collection bin fills up, and why keeping a playable ball in use now comes before recycling it.
Interview by Brett Stadelmann. Responses have been lightly edited for presentation. Figures and plans are supplied by BallBack and reflect its update through 19 October 2026.
The Origins of BallBack
When you took those first 400 tennis balls home, what did your family think? When did you realize this might become something bigger?
My family didn’t like thousands of balls now taking up space in our house, and the pile quickly outgrew our garage. Some balls went to animal shelters, some ended up under the legs of chairs at school, and the rest were recycled. I first realized it could be bigger when I started posting about the project, and people started joining BallBack. The biggest growth was when a video about why I started BallBack passed 100,000 views and students from across the country started messaging me asking how to do this in their own cities.
From Collection Bin to Second Life
What happens to a tennis ball collected by BallBack, from the court to its next use?
It starts with a free collection bin at a partner court. Players toss their dead balls in instead of the trash. Once or twice a month, a student chapter leader picks up the bins and sorts through them. Anything that still bounces stays in play: it goes to youth tennis programs, school teams, dog shelters like Flower Mound Animal Shelter, or senior homes, where they’re used as walker feet.
The rest get boxed up with prepaid UPS labels and shipped to RecycleBalls, a nonprofit recycler in Vermont. They grind the balls into rubber crumb that becomes new tennis court surfaces, playground padding, and footing for horse arenas. Once the boxes leave us, RecycleBalls handles the processing, so they’re the best source for the technical details.
What makes tennis balls difficult to recycle, and what have you learned about the difference between collecting something and actually getting it recycled?
Tennis balls are built to survive being smashed by a racket. The felt is glued tightly to a pressurized rubber core, which makes them hard to break apart, and curbside recycling won’t take them. There are also very few places that can process them, so almost every ball in North America that gets recycled goes through the same small network.
The biggest lesson: a ball in a bin isn’t recycled yet. It still has to be picked up, sorted, boxed, labeled, dropped off, and processed, and it can get stuck at any of those steps. Bins overflow, garages fill up, boxes sit waiting for labels. That’s why we only count a ball once it’s been shipped or donated, and why we train chapter leaders to ship within 1 week of a pickup.
Building a Student-Led Network
How did you persuade your first tennis centers to participate? What obstacles did you work through?
Mostly by getting rejected. I went down the local directory calling tennis centers, and the first seven said no. Nobody knew who I was, I didn’t know what to say on the phone, and a lot of people assumed I was selling something. The eighth said yes once I started opening with the fact that I was my school’s official recycler.
What made it easy for them was that it’s completely free and takes zero work on their end. They were already throwing the balls away, and now they get recognized as a partner. The practical obstacle came after: my first bins came back full of bottles and wrappers. That got better as players and staff got used to the bins, and we added clearer signage.
What does the student network look like today, and how do students fit collections around school?
We now have 350+ members and 38 chapter leaders, with members in 42 states. Chapter leaders range from middle schoolers to college students. Each one partners with courts near them and commits to one or two pickup trips a month, usually an hour or two each, so it fits around school and sports. Most pickups and UPS drop-offs happen on weekends.
Everyone connects through our online community, where leaders share wins, ask questions, and get matched with others in their state so no one starts alone. When the network first exploded I tried to personally mentor everyone and once booked 32 calls in one day. That didn’t scale, so I turned what I knew into step-by-step guides, and experienced leaders now train new ones. Some chapters have really taken off, like our Manhattan chapter, where one senior ships around 750 balls a month and sends the still-bouncy ones to youth programs.
What has BallBack achieved so far?
From July 2024 through October 19, 2026:
- 200,000+ tennis balls kept out of landfills
- 56+ partner facilities, including tennis centers, clubs, high schools, HOAs, and parks
- 38 student chapter leaders across 18 states
- 350+ members in 42 states
- $12,050 raised
These are BallBack’s reported totals for July 2024 to 19 October 2026. Its ball count includes donations for reuse and shipments to its recycling partner, rather than only balls already processed.
What does it cost to collect, store and ship the balls, and how do you cover those costs?
Collection is nearly free since the bins go to partner courts at no cost and students do the pickups. Storage is mostly garages, ours and our chapter leaders’. Shipping was always our biggest cost. Early on we paid for every label ourselves at about $15 per shipment. A Lead4Change grant funded our first prepaid shipping, and now we receive free prepaid labels through the USTA, so chapter leaders and facilities ship at no cost. We’ve raised $12,050 total, and Hack Club fiscally sponsors us.
Cost has shaped how we operate. In-person pickups only work where we have a student leader with a car, so for everywhere else we created an affiliate program: any facility or person in the US can request a free prepaid label, pack a box, and drop it off.
Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead
Is there a moment that captures why this matters to you?
I’d say it’s reflecting on all the chapter leaders and team members who are now so invested in helping further our mission. I’ve come a long way from recycling by myself in Dallas, and I’m very grateful I get to mentor other students to help recycle tennis balls in their community.
Have you had setbacks or discovered that something you believed about recycling wasn’t right?
I’ve had plenty of rejections from tennis centers before my first yes, bins full of trash, and burnout from trying to coach every new student myself.
The belief that changed most is that I used to think recycling was the goal. Now I see it as the last resort. A ball that still bounces is worth more on a court than ground into rubber, so we now pull out playable balls first and send them to youth programs, schools, and shelters. Only the truly dead ones get recycled.
Have you found ways to keep balls in use longer? What changes would you like to see?
Reuse first is the biggest one: youth programs, school PE departments, dog shelters, and walker feet for senior homes.
For the wider sport: I’d love for every club to treat a recycling bin like a water fountain, something that’s just there by default. For manufacturers, take-back programs and balls designed to be recycled. Currently, the ITF has a working group exploring a fully recyclable ball, and I’d love to see that become the standard.
What comes next, and what would make the biggest difference? What’s the best first step for readers?
Our next target is 250,000 balls. We’re also planning a world record attempt for the most tennis balls recycled in one week in Spring 2027, with chapters and partner courts across the country collecting at the same time. The biggest practical difference would be more chapter leaders in new cities and more facilities working with us.
For readers, the easiest first step is to ask your local court what happens to its dead balls. Anyone can request a free prepaid shipping label at ballback.org/labels, list your facility, or start a chapter at ballback.org/chapter.
Keeping useful things in use
BallBack’s shift towards reuse reflects the order of the 5 Rs of zero waste: recycling has a role, but a useful object does not have to become raw material yet. For Prem and his fellow students, the work begins with asking what a ball can still do.
All photographs courtesy of BallBack.