Tennis Ball Innovation and a Vision for Sustainability on Center Court

We love it when the entrepreneurial stars align – innovative high school students meeting at a Wharton Global Youth program, feeling inspired, doing their research and following through on an idea that is helping to change the world. That is the subject of this month’s podcast – how Shreyas Gorre and Ari Fayne, two typical high school athletes with an interest in business, founded Serve2Sustain to help make tennis a more sustainable, eco-friendly sport. As you’ll hear, they have had their share of challenges, and at the same time they have hit plenty of winners in their quest to keep old tennis balls out of landfills – where they often sit for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation, which you can listen to by clicking the arrow above.

Wharton Global Youth Program: Hello and welcome to Future of the Business World, the podcast introducing you to young entrepreneurs worldwide. I’m Diana Drake of the Wharton Global Youth Program at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. If you’ve listened to one or all of our 47 episodes, then you know. High school students are up to some pretty amazing things — launching startups and nonprofits, designing passion projects and embracing an entrepreneurial mindset that will empower them wherever they land. Their ideas are intriguing and their commitment inspiring, always against the backdrop of business education.

As we start a new school year and podcast season here in the U.S., Wharton Global Youth is excited to bring you a fresh lineup of monthly conversations with interesting teen innovators. We met many of them in the past few months during our summer programs, and Comment and Win competition, and are eager to share their stories.

If you’re like me, late summer vibes radiate off of Center Court in Flushing Meadows, Queens, where tennis lovers unite for the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament. Today’s guests were no doubt watching with curiosity. Shreyas Gorre and Ari Fayne are the co-founders of Serve2Sustain, a nonprofit that is working to make tennis a sustainable, eco-friendly sport.

Shreyas, Ari, welcome to Future of the Business World.

Shreyas Gorre: Thank you so much for having us.

Wharton Global Youth: You both attended Wharton Global Youth’s Essentials of Entrepreneurship program in the summer of 2023 and began to build your business from there. Can you first tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you met?

Shreyas: Hi, my name is Shreyas. I go to Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, and I play varsity tennis at my school.

Ari: Hi, my name is Ari. I go to the Latin School of Chicago, and I play soccer and tennis at my school. Me and Shreyas actually met at a Wharton Youth business camp focusing specifically on entrepreneurship, and we hit it off within the first few days of the camp and started playing tennis together there.

Wharton Global Youth: Your research suggests that some 125 million tennis balls end up in U.S. landfills each year. That’s a substantial number. Why is it even a problem? Shreyas, why don’t you take this one?

Shreyas: When you think about tennis balls, you don’t think about what the tennis ball is made of – rubber and all those different plastic materials. But truth be told, tennis balls are not biodegradable, and that’s the real problem here. We’re essentially putting 125 million tennis balls into the ground, and it takes about 400 years for tennis balls to decompose, which will, in the end, contribute to long-term waste. The real issue here is that we’re leaving tennis balls in the ground and they’re not going away for a long time. And when you think about it, landfills are for other biodegradable products or purposes. So these 125 million tennis balls are taking up a lot of space in these landfills where they could be used for other purposes. Lastly, the most important thing about why this is a problem is because of the waste of material. Rubber is not a resource that you can find an infinite amount of. There’s only so much rubber, and eventually, we would run out of these materials. It’s so important that we reuse as much as possible instead of essentially just dumping it into the ground where it’s never going to decompose.

Wharton Global Youth: You guys have come up with a solution to this problem. How is Serve2Sustain addressing the issue? Ari?

Ari: We realized that tennis balls cannot be recycled in a recycle bin, unlike a lot of plastics, because they’re made of so many parts. So, we [thought]: how can we recycle these tennis balls? We did a lot of research, and we found a facility that could take apart a tennis ball and take apart the rubber — which we’ll talk about later — but the rubber can be repurposed from the tennis ball. And they can also recycle all the other parts that are recyclable in a tennis ball. How Serve2Sustain is specifically getting the tennis balls is [through] chapters. We have chapters in LA [Los Angeles], in San Francisco, Westport, [Connecticut], and New York, Long Island. They’re all over. Each chapter is run by a high school kid who is passionate about tennis and is passionate about helping the environment. The way that these chapters work is one chapter might have three club partners who work with them, who recycle tennis balls on a semi-monthly basis. They go and pick up the tennis balls from the tennis clubs. Typically, it could be anywhere from 1,000 to up to 6,000 for big tennis clubs, and then they recycle the tennis balls by dropping them off at UPS, where they’re then shipped to our partner facility in Virginia.

Wharton Global Youth: Very interesting. This does pique my curiosity about your origin story. You mentioned that you guys were both at Essentials of Entrepreneurship together. How did you start talking about taking your passion for tennis and turning it into a nonprofit to help the planet?

Ari: We were playing tennis over the summer when we were at the business camp and we had just had a class on repurposing stuff. I remember we were talking about repurposing something into a kale-cutter product, which was one of the things we learned about. We had just bought two cans [of tennis balls] because we were playing for fun, and we were going to throw out the tennis balls. So, we’re like, can we recycle these tennis balls? And a quick Google search will tell you, no, you can’t recycle tennis balls. So, we unfortunately had to throw them out. But that had us then thinking, how can we make tennis, the sport that we play so much and love, [become] more eco-friendly? After the camp was when we really started to research it and look up how we could recycle tennis balls. What parts of the tennis ball are recyclable? What parts are not? And then how can you repurpose it? That’s how it got started. We were playing tennis at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wharton Global Youth: Continue that thread for me and tell me how has the nonprofit grown in the past year, since you were together?

Ari:  About a year ago was when we officially launched, probably in the first week of school after our program in 2023. We started with zero chapters and today we are in nine different states with 11 chapters. It’s grown quite a lot, because when we started, we [thought] it would be great if we could have three chapters, three high school kids doing this. But now we have 32 kids across 11 chapters, all working to help make tennis a more eco-friendly sport.

Wharton Global Youth: And how does the communication between the two of you work because you’re in different states? Has it worked pretty easily for you to collaborate together?

Ari: Yeah, definitely, especially with Zoom. When we have to go on a call with one of our partners, we can go on Zoom. Because we’re all high schoolers, we don’t have to go on Zoom when we’re communicating with chapters. We can use iMessage or WhatsApp to communicate. And we also do a lot of other forms, like spreadsheets. There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes just to keep organized. It’s definitely not an issue communicating, despite us being in different time zones.

Shreyas: Ari and I focus on going through our agenda every week. And then we talk almost every day about what’s going on with these different chapters, what do we maybe have to focus on? Who do we have to stay more in touch with?

Wharton Global Youth: Shreyas, I want to stay with you for a minute here. Your business model is such that you have had to double down on negotiating with partner companies. Can you talk about how that works, and what you have learned about the art of negotiation?

Shreyas: We had to negotiate with Recycyleballs for our chapter model. We needed to figure out a way to send boxes, as Ari talked about, send bins to our chapter and then have them have a prepaid shipping label on it, so those chapters can essentially send the balls back to their recycling facility. [We spent] about two to three months in negotiation. It was very difficult. Something I’ve learned a lot about in negotiations is to know where you’re coming from. It’s so important to know who you are, what your authority is, what your credibility is, relative to the other person that you’re negotiating with.

When Ari and I started out, we were just two high school kids who seemed like they were way over their heads. I bet to them, they thought we weren’t going to [follow] through on this. It was difficult getting a partnership that would work out in the way we wanted it to, and we ended up having to sacrifice a lot of what we were trying to go for in the end. But now that we are one of their bigger clients, in a few more weeks we’re going to be renegotiating our partnership, and it looks like we’re going to be able to get a better partnership that favors us a little bit more now that we’ve established some of that authority and credibility.

Wharton Global Youth: And who is this partner? Can you tell us a little bit more about them?

Shreyas: [They are] Recycleballs. They do the recycling in combination with Laykold. We’re also indirectly partnered with Laykold. Recycleballs takes the tennis balls, strips the felt off of them, and then grinds down that rubber into these fine pieces, which Laykold uses to surface brand-new tennis courts.

Wharton Global Youth: Ari, I want to move to you. What has been your greatest challenge as you’ve built this out? Can you share a struggle that you’ve had or a problem that you’ve had to solve along the way?

Ari: That’s a great question, because it has not been a straight path. I remember when we were starting off during those first two to three months, me and Shreyas were probably on the phone for well over an hour every single day discussing our plan, how to roll it out, and just talking about partnerships. [So many] logistics [were] going on behind the scenes. But if you had to tell me what was one of your largest problems, there were two very large ones. It’s getting the high school students to be active and reaching out to high school students [for our chapters]. For example, we have a chapter out in Texas. We used a kid who was in our business camp with us at Wharton. It was one of his friends. And then also a lot of family friends and friends of friends of friends, because a lot of our friends are competitive tennis players, and they would have friends who are tennis players. So, it’s just a network of tennis players who would have to go through sometimes five different people to get a person to help us out in an area, to create a chapter.

In addition to that, obtaining the clubs is not as easy as you would think. Despite us incurring all the costs — picking up the balls and then shipping them. Originally, we thought that the clubs would either help out with the cost or drop [their used tennis balls] off at UPS, or that the clubs would somehow help us out. That was me not thinking straight, because the clubs did not want to be as involved as we thought [they would]. And we tried to motivate them. We motivated them with tax writeoffs on each ball. We valued each ball at 40¢ and said you could take this writeoff. And even then, there was a lot of pushback. Some clubs did agree to do that and then would help us. Our chapter leaders, which we’re so thankful for, will pick up the balls on a weekend and drop them off at a UPS Store. And obtaining these clubs was such a challenge, because some of them would not respond to us on email. We would have to call them a lot of times. These chapter leaders or people in the chapter would go to the club and approach them, and the people at the club would be very open to it once we explained it, but they wouldn’t want to do much work themselves. They’re fine holding onto the balls for an extra day or two, but they are not okay paying for it, and they’re not really that flexible in terms of dropping off the balls at a UPS Store.

“Our growth and our expansion would not have happened without our chapter leaders, without that team of people that we built. Without those people, our cause wouldn’t be what it is today.” –Shreyas Gorre, Co-founder, Serve2Sustain

Wharton Global Youth:  It sounds like your network and building that out has been fundamental to helping you grow this.

Ari: Definitely. It’s amazing. We now have 32 tennis players all with the same mission, and they all just wanted to help our tennis community. It’s great because I would have never met these people, and I’m so happy that I was able to meet them. And then Shreyas can also talk to you about some other struggles we had, specifically with the financial side of it.

Shreyas: As Ari already talked about, these clubs didn’t want to help us out, so we had to find a model where it was so easy for the clubs to be a part of because without the clubs, we don’t have the tennis balls to recycle, and they’re going to end up throwing them out. The clubs’ main goal is making money. If they’re spending time filling up these bins, dropping them off, these workers, or whoever they are paying, are not doing what they should be doing at the club. So, we ended up trying to find a way, also because they didn’t want to pay the money, to make a chapter model that was super easy for them. That also goes hand in hand with the cost that we incur for every chapter that we make. For every chapter, it costs us $600 to recycle balls for one year. To get that money, me and Ari both had to pitch to different businesses, our parents’ colleagues, different family members, friends. We were trying to fundraise like crazy at the beginning, because we didn’t have this money. And we also are a 501C3, so we were able to give them a tax writeoff, which was helpful. But that also was another example where we needed to expand our network as big as possible. And I think that was one of the most important things — just making connections and building the network. That’s what allows you to do all of this. None of this happens without building that network.

Wharton Global Youth: What did you learn about the success of a pitch? Is there something that you took away from that?

Shreyas: Basically, when we’re giving a pitch —  I also pitched for you this summer — I realized that you want to try to keep it short and get your main idea across. It’s important to lead off with what is going to be that wow factor. When we tell people we’re repurposing tennis balls into tennis courts, that’s the wow factor to them and that’s what makes them get interested in our cause and want to donate to our cause.

Ari: I also want to add one ongoing struggle. One of them that we’re currently dealing with is managing chapters. So, the chapter leaders have two to three kids in their own chapter who they’re managing. But something we have to look at is how many balls each chapter is recycling. We’ve noticed that most of our people recycle as many as they possibly can. However, we have formed chapters that recycle maybe 1,000 balls within the past eight months, which is not great considering how many balls we are expected to be recycling. Something we have to do is constantly check in with chapter leaders, especially the ones who are not as active in recycling the balls. And sometimes we’ve had to change chapter leaders, which never goes down well, but it’s something you do have to do. We have spreadsheets that we use to monitor everything. And the chapter leaders enter every time they call a club, every time they interact with the tennis club is on the spreadsheet. We have to know – since we have to do so much to pay $600 for this chapter – that they are doing everything in their ability to recycle the tennis balls and proceed with the Serve2Sustain mission.

Wharton Global Youth: A consistent thread in your story is your willingness to collaborate. First, you guys teamed up with each other, and then I also understand that you partnered with a student, Shreyas, whom you met during a podcast pitch session I held this summer. What do you see as the power of collaboration, and how has it helped your mission?

Shreyas: Throughout this entire experience, we’ve seen how important collaboration is. It made me realize that without collaboration, you look at the stuff you have around you today, all the technology, a lot of that wouldn’t exist without that teamwork, without working together, without fostering that innovation. And that’s what we found when we were proceeding with our organization. Working together with me and Ari, and we also brought in other people to consult, we were able to think of creative solutions to the problem, which is that balls are being thrown into landfills. As we kept going along, we kept collaborating with others, building these connections and with multiple people, you’re able to think of creative solutions, things that you may not have thought of originally by yourself. Having that team of people and being able to think of different solutions and get that diverse opinion, that diverse perspective is so important. Also, in regards to the entire teamwork, our growth and our expansion would not have happened without our chapter leaders, without that team of people that we built, and without those people, our cause wouldn’t be what it is today. We wouldn’t have the impact that we have. It’s so important to just meet new people and work with them, because those people are going to be able to help you out. And with those people, you’re going to be able to do more than you would be able to do by yourself. Collaboration could come in random ways too. For example, our partnership with a person we met on your pitch in the summer, which is the YPC organization CEO. We met him, and we came up with a partnership that’s now benefiting both of us, as we’re able to help each other grow and help each other with our causes.

Wharton Global Youth: Ah,I love to hear that you guys met during our pitch session. That’s great to hear. And what is YPC?

Shreyas: Youth Philanthropy Council. It’s this organization in California.

Wharton Global Youth: I’m curious, have you played on a court that has repurposed Serve2Sustain tennis balls?

Ari: Unfortunately, not. But it’s very fulfilling to know that many major U.S. tennis players have been able to play on our courts at the U.S. Open this year, and it makes us feel really good.

 

Wharton Global Youth:  That is very exciting. Shreyas, what is next for Serve2Sustain?

Shreyas: We’re continuously expanding. We’re going to continue expanding to more chapters, trying to get into states that we aren’t in right now, and spread that awareness. A lot of people don’t know that tennis balls aren’t degradable, or they don’t think about it initially. Once you spread that awareness, they start to subconsciously think about it. We’re going to continue to expand. We’re also looking at partnerships with bigger tennis clubs, such as IMG [Tennis Academy] and Evert [Tennis Academy]. Currently, we’re partnered with John McEnroe Tennis Academy in New York, and they give us every month about 2,000 or 3000 balls, which is great for us because it is a lot of balls, and they’re just throwing them out. So now we’re able to recycle those. We’re hoping to have that same impact with IMG and Evert, which are also very big clubs down in Florida. That’s the main goal right now. Just get bigger clubs, expand, and try to make the planet more sustainable.

Wharton Global Youth: Are you guys having fun with this?

Ari: I love it. It’s great meeting new people. I know tennis people now in Miami, and I know tennis people in Fremont, California, and I just think it’s great that I get to meet all these new people.

Wharton Global Youth: You agree, Shreyas?

Shreyas: It’s so much fun knowing that you’re able to do all this good, and then also work with your best friends — some people that I’m going to talk to for years. Some of these chapter heads I talk to every day, and it’s not even about Serve2Sustain. We’re just friends, and we enjoy talking with each other.

Wharton Global Youth: All right, why don’t we end with our lightning round? I need you guys to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

What is something about you that would surprise us? Shreyas? 

Shreyas: I’m an avid 3D printer.

Ari. I love Minecraft.

Wharton Global Youth: Who won your last tennis match, and what was the score?

Shreyas: I won. And it was at Wharton when we last played. I won six to three.

Wharton Global Youth: What is one memento from Essentials of Entrepreneurship that you will always hold onto? Ari?

Ari: Bringing old things to a new light.

Shreyas: Problem first, then solution.

Wharton Global Youth: You are starting your own business-themed talk show. Who is your first guest and why? Shreyas?

Shreyas: I would say Mark Cuban, just because I grew up watching him on Shark Tank. I think it’d be interesting to get to talk to him and learn about his experiences.

Ari: I would say Reed Hastings. He has touched such a large audience with Netflix, and I feel like all ages use it, and it’s just something that people are going to be using for the rest of their lives. It’s just a continuous market. I think it’s really interesting.

Wharton Global Youth: Thank you both for joining us on Future of the Business World.

Conversation Starters

How are Shreyas Gorre and Ari Fayne using the power of collaboration to achieve their mission with Serve2Sustain?

Read through some of the challenges these entrepreneurs have faced. What suggestions do you have for them to problem-solve? Share your ideas in the comment section of this transcript.

Shreyas says that even the explosion in technology innovation takes teamwork. How does this help you to see the emergence of artificial intelligence in a new light?