A Crowdfunder has been launched in Sheffield to recycle used tennis, squash and padel balls and give them a new life as flooring for racket ball courts.

The Bounce Back Collective is a start-up focussed on preventing racket sport waste from ending up in landfill by looking at alternative uses for it along with the help of engineering students.

The idea was triggered by a local tennis club giving away used balls, as well as the rise in Padel.

The CEO, Alex Timmins-Jones, 35, of Nether Edge said: “A standard ball takes 400 years in landfill to biodegrade.

“If you play at a decent standard of padel, you would expect to crack open a brand new set of balls every time you play.

“If you times the amount of clubs that are opening by the amount of players that are playing it, there’s gonna be an absolute deluge of balls that are just being chucked away into landfill.”

The start-up intends to use the inner rubber core of sports balls as a more sustainable material for the shock-pads underneath tennis courts that are currently made out of ‘virgin rubber’.

Mr Timmins-Jones said: “It’s this rubber core that is really really difficult to recycle.

“With all of these courts being built quickly and cheaply, they have used cheap rubber and non-recycled materials.”

“The whole point of the name ‘Bounce Back’ is that the rubber from the balls can be made into these rubber shock pads that can then be used to build the courts.

“A circular environmental solution,” he said.

With the money from the crowdfunder, the Build Back Collective aims to build a prototype of the recycled rubber shock pads to show proof of concept. 

Mr Timmins-Jones said: “I would love to work with engineering or manufacturing students to build a prototype.”

The company will then apply for grant funding for shredding and granulating machines before investing in an industrial workspace in Sheffield.

“I want this to be a Sheffield business,” he said.

“In the Sheffield area, squash is absolutely massive and there’s countless tennis clubs as well.”

The start-up has already gained ample support.

“Clubs are giving me balls left, right and centre,” Mr Timmins-Jones added.

“We’re only at the start of this journey but I’m excited to see where it can go.”

You can donate to the crowdfunder here

For engineering enquiries, email Mr Timmins-Jones at alex.tj@bouncebackcollective.com