00:02Australia has a sports waste problem.
00:06About a thousand tonnes of sporting equipment goes to landfill every year,
00:10including 10 million tennis balls.
00:12Tennis is one of the nation's most popular activities.
00:15Close to one and a half million Australians smash the court regularly.
00:20Balls, however, quickly lose their bounce.
00:23Fresh cans are needed every match,
00:25and that means every club has a high ball burn rate.
00:29It would be in the tens of thousands across the course of the year.
00:31It became very apparent to me that tennis balls didn't have a long life.
00:35The waste caught the attention of tennis lover Lillian Hsu years ago.
00:39Then in 2024, while in university,
00:42she developed an idea to collect dead balls,
00:45turn that into a rubber crumb,
00:47then transform it into something with greater traction.
00:52Shoe soles.
00:53The project has financial support from Sustainability Victoria
00:56and balls are collected from 30 participating Victorian tennis clubs.
01:01It's a really natural, easy fit for us.
01:03If that ends up on the soles of our shoes, what a practical outcome.
01:07Tennis ball shoes, however, won't be strutting out on Rod Laver Arena just yet.
01:12We're predominantly working with brands that are making shoes for more casual wear.
01:20And there are high hopes for this project.
01:22Australia loves all kinds of sports.
01:24And in the future, this project wants to include
01:27soccer balls, AFL footies, basketballs,
01:29into what can be recycled into footwear.
01:32We hope that projects like this can spur on further innovation.
01:36It is just a huge issue.
01:38So, tackling it one sport at a time.
01:41This program is a progressive part of the 70s.
01:41is in the 70s that it increased to 1.
01:41It's a 75-7.
01:41How many people have an interactive
01:42The 80s.
01:43The 80s.
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