Serve2Sustain, a nonprofit founded by high schoolers Shreyas Gorre and Ari Fayne, is dedicated to making the tennis industry more environmentally friendly. The organization, with 20 members spanning seven states in the U.S., collects old tennis balls, known as dead tennis balls, from tennis clubs and partners with companies RecycleBalls and Laykold to repurpose them into new tennis courts. In just seven months, they have recycled over 110,000 tennis balls from 11 different tennis clubs, raising over $12,000. This rapidly growing national organization is changing the game.
Co-founders Shreyas Gorre and Ari Fayne first came up with the idea for Serve2Sustain during the Wharton Global Youth Program for Entrepreneurship in 2023. The program taught them how to think like entrepreneurs, identify problems within their community, and develop solutions. It equipped them with the skills to raise funds, create go-to-market strategies, and understand their target audience, enabling them to incentivize high schoolers to establish chapters.
Gorre and Fayne, both passionate tennis players, conceived the idea while playing tennis at the University of Pennsylvania. After hours of playing, they were unsure of what to do with their used tennis balls. Instead of discarding them in the trash, they explored the possibility of reusing them, leading to the creation of Serve2Sustain.
Although the organization began by recycling tennis balls from Gorre and Fayne’s local tennis clubs, it has since adopted a chapter model. Each chapter has a degree of autonomy within the organization and is responsible for recycling tennis balls from local tennis clubs, including liaising with the clubs, collecting the tennis balls, and shipping them to the partner companies for recycling.
