LA Teens Chase World Record Recycling Tennis Balls

Every year, 125 million tennis balls end up in American landfills, where they'll sit for over 400 years without breaking down. A group of LA teens decided that's not good enough.

High schoolers across Los Angeles County are leading "Another Bounce," a youth-driven initiative to collect thousands of tennis and pickleballs for recycling. Their mission goes beyond just setting a world record. They want to change how the entire sports industry thinks about waste.

"There's so much waste, and nobody really pays as much attention to it as they should," said Max Ehrman, a 15-year-old Brentwood School freshman leading the charge. He's part of a dozen students on the Junior Board of Habits of Waste, a nonprofit focused on fighting climate change through better habits.

The teens include Ford and Boone Casady, 16-year-old twin brothers who rank among the top junior pickleball players in the country. For them, this is personal. "I've grown up in the Palisades and in the ocean my entire life, and I've noticed the trash," Boone said.

The students are tackling the problem from three angles. They're collecting balls within 30 miles of Pacific Palisades and accepting mailed donations to a Santa Monica warehouse. They're also showing up at city council meetings in LA and Santa Monica, advocating for ordinances requiring parks and schools to recycle sports balls.

Most ambitiously, they're campaigning for major ball manufacturers to create nationwide take-back programs. Pickleball alone is booming across tens of thousands of courts nationwide, making the waste problem bigger every year.

Why This Inspires

These aren't just kids complaining about a problem. They're building real solutions while juggling homework and practice schedules. They're speaking to elected officials, working with coaches and clubs, and storing thousands of donated balls in a warehouse.

The initiative started when students at founder Sheila Morovati's son's school noticed how many balls got tossed after just a few hours of use. Instead of shrugging it off, they decided to act.

The group is hosting a community collection event on April 19, with a goal to count all donations by Earth Day on April 22. Morovati, who previously set a world record for crayon donations, said even reaching 50,000 to 100,000 balls would be a massive win.

"How can we look at what we're doing every day to this planet and say, 'Hey, can I do any better?'" Morovati asked.

These teens already know their answer, and they're inviting everyone else to join them in making sports a little greener.