A company that loves both tennis and the environment has set up shop in Barbour County.

Recycle Balls receives tennis balls from all over the country and turns them into dog toys, padding for horse tracks and tennis courts, among other things, all with a mission to make the sport of tennis more environmentally friendly.

Company officials told 12 News that the relocation from Burlington, Vermont to West Virginia comes from a desire to be more centrally located as the state is within 500 miles of 44 percent of the U.S. population.

Executive Director Erin Cunningham told 12 News about how the company’s founder Derrick Senior was playing tennis with his son when he noticed something. “They went to go throw their tennis balls in the trash, and saw a whole mound of tennis balls in the trashcan and thought ‘there’s got to be a better way,’” she said.

So how does it all work? Warehouse Manager Jim Harper, explained to 12 News that tennis courts ship up to 20,000 balls a day to Belington, and Recycle Balls sorts through them. Some of the balls are in good enough shape to play with again, while more worn tennis balls get repurposed as dog toys or they get holes punched into them so that they can go on the bottom of the chairs. He said the company hopes people send even these repurposed tennis balls back to be processed for final use.

The company also uses a device called the “Green Machine” to turn the tennis balls into horse footing. This mixture of pulverized felt and rubber is used by horse arenas where they provide a soft surface for the animals to walk on. The Green Machine can also separate the rubber from the felt, and those raw materials can be turned into things like yarn and building materials.

Recycle Balls told 12 News that it recycles three million tennis balls each year, and given that a tennis ball takes 400 years to decompose in a landfill, it might be as the company’s tagline says: “Yellow is the new green.”

Courtesy : wboy.com