BallBack is a student-led nonprofit that recycles used tennis balls, fiscally sponsored by Hack Club (a 501(c)(3)). Every year roughly 125 million tennis balls are thrown out in the U.S. Each takes over 400 years to decompose, and fewer than 1% are recycled. Facilities have no infrastructure to do better, so we built it.Here's how it works. A network of youth chapter leaders, each a high schooler running BallBack in their own city, collects dead balls from partner tennis facilities, sorts them by hand, and routes them three ways. Most ship to our national recycling partner, RecycleBalls, and are ground into crumb rubber for new court surfaces, playground padding, and equestrian footing. Lightly used balls are donated to youth and under-resourced tennis programs that can't afford new equipment. The rest go to local animal shelters.Facilities pay nothing and spend about five minutes per box. They collect balls in a box they already own, and when it's full we email a prepaid UPS label to ship it free. We cover shipping through grants and donations.

So far we've recycled or repurposed 160,000+ balls through 55 partner facilities, with 31 chapter leaders across 16 states, and over 310 members running on under $0.02 per ball. What makes it work is the model itself. Every chapter is a self-sustaining unit run by a student, so it scales city by city without a big budget or paid staff. Each new leader gains real operational experience while diverting tens of thousands of balls from landfills in their community. It's a national environmental problem being solved from the ground up, one pickup at a time.