In the last two years, tennis has taken over our closets (court-appropriate garb can be found everywhere from Skims to Miu Miu), our screens (who could forget Zendaya’s turn as the tennis protogé-turned-elite-coach Tashi Duncan in “Challengers”) and now — our living rooms.
At least that is the hope of Belgian eco-designer Mathilde Wittock, who fashions bespoke furniture from discarded tennis balls. Wittock’s sleek, modernist chaise longues are entirely cushionless — save for the padding of 500 precisely arranged tennis balls. Her one meter-long benches are similarly sparse, with some 270 balls being both stylish and structurally substantial.
“It takes around 24 different manufacturing steps to (make) a tennis ball, which is around five days. Then it has such a short lifespan,” Wittock told CNN in a video call from Brussels. “I was looking into tennis balls because I played tennis myself, so I know there is a lot of waste.”
Around 300 million tennis balls are produced each year — and almost all of them end up in landfills, taking over 400 years to decompose. The US Open, which ended at the weekend, goes through around 70,000 each year, with Wimbledon not far behind at 55,000. Wittock estimates the lifecycle of a ball stands at just nine games, depending on the level of tennis being played. “Even if they are contained in their box, if the box has been opened the gas inside the tennis balls will be released over time,” she said. “(Eventually) they will get flat and you’ll have to throw them away.”
It takes Wittock around three to four weeks to build a chair, which she sells for $2,900. Every ball is cut and dyed by hand, with colors picked out especially to fit the client’s space. It was through much trial and error that she was able to harness the shape of the ball while masking some of its all-too-easily recognized features. “I needed to find an assembly that changed the iconic appearance of the tennis balls,” she said. “It’s yellow and has these white lines. How do I distort that relationship?”
Wittock started to see the design possibilities of the sporting equipment when she was studying at Central Saint Martins art school in London. “I was really interested in eco-design and where I sourced my material,” she told CNN. “And I realized that it was always very complicated to follow the history of materials. You never know where they come from, or how they’ve been processed. I got really angry at that.”
Today, she receives all her materials via donations from tennis clubs. Collections began small — sometimes with just 10 tossed balls at a time — but quickly grew. Now, Wittock works with the Federation of Wallonia in Brussels, who have offered her their entire stock — around 100,000. How long will it last? “It’s enough for a few months,” she said. “If things get wild. Maybe nine months, because I have a rhythm of cutting tennis balls. I can get through 1,800 per week.”
But creation isn’t the only goal. In fact, more important to Wittock is how her pieces are destroyed. “I’m an eco designer,” she said. “Eco design is about circularity. You can use great materials that are low carbon emission or recycled, but you need to think of the end cycle. If it’s not a circle, and if you can’t reuse (the elements) into something else, it’s not eco design. It’s even worse, because it’s new materials.” At the end of her furniture’s life, Wittock can de-assemble the hundreds of tennis balls (which are woven together without glue) to be recycled, where the fuzz is burnt off and the rubber shredded to make bouncy playground mats.
Her next challenge? Tapping into the tens of thousands of tennis clubs in North America. “I’ve got so many people interested in the US,” said Wittock. “I’m really thinking of coming over and starting recycling there.” So next time you watch a tournament, don’t lament the abandoned balls — their lifecycle might just be beginning.
