In 2012, IGK Equestrian teamed up with Project Green Ball to perfect a way to recycle tennis balls. Over three hundred million tennis balls are manufactured around the world every year, and every year tens of thousands of tennis balls are thrown into the trash, and then discarded into landfills. Instead of letting all of these tennis balls bounce their way to a landfill, IGK Equestrian and Project Green Ball have found a way to recycle them.
Every day we get boxes and boxes of tennis balls shipped to our warehouse. If you headed out to the back of our facility where all of the tennis balls are warehoused, you would see just how many tennis balls are sent to us. At one point we had as many as 200,000 tennis balls.
If you don’t know, IGK Equestrian has been manufacturing horse footing products since 2003 (for over 12 years). We’ve created the perfect dust-free riding surface for every discipline. By teaming up with Project Green Ball, we have agreed to help recycle the tennis balls, grinding them up and incorporating them into a special mix for our dust-free synthetic footing, called our Grand Slam footing (“GS”).
In 2012, Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA purchased the very first arena using ground tennis balls which provided the fiber and rubber for our footing recipe. Through Project Green Ball, a granting fund for therapeutic riding arenas has been established by UPS, specifically addressing the recycling of tennis balls. The EquiCenter, Inc, located in Honeoye Falls, NY received such a grant in 2013 for their indoor therapeutic arena. IGK Equestrian has received positive feedback from both facility operators and was invited to the donation ceremony at the EquiCenter. You can check out our Facebook Page to see pictures of the event.
There is still opportunity to have your therapeutic facility funded through UPS for the purchase of “GS” riding arena surface. (We are here to answer any technical questions you may have about the base prep and installation of your arena surface.) If you’re interested in applying for a grant for your therapeutic riding facility you may visit Projectgreenball.org or email [email protected].
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