With every dead tennis ball thrown into the trash can, there is another 400 years of decomposition associated with that ball. Oak Park High School senior Kavin Phabiani decided to do his part on behalf of OPHS. In Nov. 2019, Phabiani began a tennis ball recycling program. 

“We partnered with a recycle program called Recycle Balls And they sent us this pack of 10 cardboard bins that we put at the courts,” Phabiani said.

This first attempt at the OPHS recycling program faced some adversity. The cardboard got ruined and weathered by the rain and wind, and people started to break the boxes and steal the balls. 

“Following [the adversity], me and my brother got this one plastic bin and cut a hole in it,” Phabiani said. “We put it at the high school courts, and then people would start putting tennis balls in them. That worked decently well and we sent a few shipments of those balls to Recycle Balls.”

Because Phabiani wanted to increase the number of balls per shipment, Phabiani contacted Richard Ortega, Facility Manager at OPHS and Head Custodian for OPUSD, who put Phabini in contact with the Oak Park Unified School District environmental coordinator Keyla Triteman.

“The district funded my program and we bought the actual bins from ‘Recycle Balls.’ Now at the courts you have 5 bins that we bought from Recycle balls and the initial plastic bin [my brother and I] made,” Phabiani said.

Before Phabiani organized this partnership, Ortega had often noticed that balls were still left on the fields and courts.

“I take care of the courts, football field, tennis courts, baseball fields and I had noticed for the longest time that there were so many balls,” Ortega said “Before the program I had made sure to go through the waste and would take dead balls and containers they came in and put them into the recycling bin. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to them all so Kavin’s partnership just makes it much easier.”

Throughout the entire year, the program has shipped over 2,000 balls to Recycle Balls, according to Phabiani. Ortega backs up this claim, mentioning that each week Phabiani collects around 300 balls.

“[Recycle Balls] grinds up the old balls we send them and repurpose them into new and playable tennis courts,” Phabiani said. “Right now we’re focused on tennis, but it could be really cool to expand recycling at our school to different sports.”

Phabiani’s plan is to try and expand the recycling program to the entire communities’ tennis courts. He is hoping to pursue this plan post-COVID-19.

“Make sure whenever you go play tennis or you have old tennis balls make sure you don’t just throw them away. Recycle them,” Phabiani said.