Portfolio overview

Renewaball

Renewaball is the first company that has figured out how to recycle a tennis and padel ball. They collect and recycle end-of-life tennis balls into new ones through their proprietary technology: processing used balls into clean and separate partitions of rubber and felt and putting them back together and creating a new ball, with bio-felt cloth (100% organic: wool, and cotton). By doing so, they can reduce the carbon footprint of a single tennis ball by at least 29%.

Approved by the international tennis and padel federations

It takes 400 years for a tennis ball to decompose, yet we throw them away after only a few games. Globally 350 million (120 to 130 million in Europe) used tennis balls end up in landfills each year. That is roughly 10 thousand tons of methane producing, near non-decomposable rubber waste.

Renewaball has built a waste collection network with partners across Europe. They received approval from the international tennis and padel federations in 2022, allowing the balls to be used in official tournaments.

For Renewaball we track the impact target:

➡️: Tons of CO2 avoided as a result of collecting and recycling tennis/padel balls

SDG Alignment

Let’s make circularity the new normal in sports

Renewaball was founded in Amsterdam in 2021 by an amazing mission driven tea; Hélène Hoogeboom (CEO) and Marc Rouffaer (CMO), two branding and advertising experts with past experiences at ao TBWA\Neboko & tcc global and Günther van de Rijt (COO), who is a supply chain expert with previous corporate and scale-up experience at Philips, Ista and Sartorius.

At Rubio we are especially excited about the potential to inspire the entire sporting goods industry to be more circular by proving Renewaball’s recycling model works for other products too, in other words: the systemic impact potential. We believe that by supporting Renewaball, we can contribute to a mindset shift towards sustainability in tennis and padel.

Read more in our Renewaball Impact Case.