Old pickleballs are being recycled and turned into entry-level paddles for schoolchildren to learn the game thanks to a partnership project between UK Pickleball Shop and Pickleball England.
Jack Gratton, Director of UK Pickleball Shop, first saw the potential of the idea when a ball broke whilst he was playing a match with some friends. Instead of dumping the ball in landfill, he pondered whether there might be a more ecologically sustainable solution that also reduces the sport’s carbon footprint of importing paddles from the US or China.
By pure serendipity, Freddie Gratton, Managing Director of UK Pickleball Shop, met two pickleball players, Dan and Bruce Hunter, who run Riber Products in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, whilst at a pickleball festival. Their company makes a wide variety of plastic products including canoes and kayaks, pet products and catering equipment. They were keen to test out a prototype plastic pickleball paddle made from old pickleballs.
Competitors at last year’s English Open in Telford and English Nationals in Bolton were encouraged to bring along their old pickleballs. After an “overwhelming response” from the pickleball community, Freddie collected the balls and took to the Riber Products factory for testing.
It turned out different types of pickleball have slightly different plastic polymers so they needed to be separated before being melted down and combined with other recycled plastic and reshaped into several experimental moulds. The research and development process involved different combinations of polymers, moulds and weights before hitting upon an optimum design.
UK Pickleball Shop has donated 200 of the paddles to Pickleball England for the launch of a pilot initiative to take the sport into schools and they are matching that donation. The 400 paddles will form part of a package of equipment to go out to schools on Pickleball England’s ‘pipeline list.’ This will be supported by trained coaches to introduce schoolchildren to the sport.
If feedback about the paddles is positive, UK Pickleball Shop would like to introduce a wider schools programme alongside their Club Rewards discount scheme.
“We find wooden paddles are too heavy for kids to play with comfortably,” said Freddie. “They’re also not particularly durable so if a kid or beginner whacks it they tend to break. We saw there was room in the market for an affordable but durable paddle. We now want to get the product out there and get the next generation of players into pickleball.”
The plastic paddles are also available for the wider public to buy and cost £7.99. When a customer returns it and wants to upgrade to higher-spec paddle, they will get £7.99 credit added to their UK Pickleball shop account. The returned paddle will then be donated to the schools programme.
Pickleball England Chair, Karen Mitchell, said “Pickleball England is happy to support UK Pickleball Shop’s pilot by matching their kind donation of 200 paddles and donating packs of paddles and balls to schools that have reached out requesting equipment. We applaud their desire to recycle balls and love the fact that some pickleball players from Riber Products are making all this possible, reinforcing pickleball as a community.”
