California teenagers recycled 22,000 used sports balls in a day. In a Wisconsin prison, twenty men raised a hundred monarchs

On Saturday 19 September, at Reed Park in Santa Monica, California, a Guinness World Records adjudicator counted a pile of used sports balls gathered by a group of teenagers called Another Bounce. The pile came to roughly 22,000 pickleballs and tennis balls, 2,675 pounds of them, and it left the park on a truck bound for a recycling plant. That set a record for the most sports balls recycled in one day. 1

In Wisconsin a different season was closing. At Redgranite Correctional Institution, twenty men had spent the summer feeding monarch caterpillars on milkweed and releasing the adults; by the third week of September most had gone south, bound for central Mexico. 2

Another Bounce was started by twelve student athletes from Pacific Palisades who have collected balls since February, leaving boxes at courts around Los Angeles and emptying them when they fill. By mid-September they had moved more than 15,000 used balls. 34

A tennis ball is rubber, felt and adhesive; a pickleball is moulded plastic. The group says that material can take more than 400 years to break down in a landfill, and that between 1% and 5% of tennis and padel balls avoid one. 14

Recycling partner Ridwell shreds, washes and pelletizes what the group collects, and the plastic comes back as nursery pots, carpeting and packaging. A Florida group, Bounce Back Pickle, presses its share into new pickleballs. 3

The campaign started as a school project: a friend of junior board member Milan Ramesh was frustrated by the balls thrown away each week at his lessons. 4 The twelve members say they came together while helping rebuild their community after the Palisades fire. 3

Another Bounce runs under Habits of Waste, a California nonprofit whose founder, Sheila Morovati, set her own Guinness record in 2018 by collecting more than a million used crayons for 700 teachers. 3 "By diverting more than 20,000 balls from landfills, we're showing what's possible," she said. 1

They have asked Beverly Hills, Burbank, Santa Monica, Malibu and Los Angeles to put bins at public courts and send the contents to specialist recyclers; on 24 August Malibu's council invited them to draft an ordinance. 34 An open email campaign asks Penn, Wilson, Franklin, Dunlop and Selkirk to run take-back programmes for the balls they sell. 3

Redgranite Correctional Institution sits between Oshkosh and Stevens Point and houses about 1,000 men. 5 The monarch programme began there in 2025, when Carrie Jahnke, a recreation leader, went looking for something for the prisoners who could not take part in sports. "I was looking for activities for our older and less active population," she said. 5 Inside the prison she is known as the butterfly lady. 2

Twelve men applied in writing and twelve were chosen. They started in a spare room, feeding the larvae and watching each stage through magnifying glasses. 5 "It was cool to see these big guys crowded around to look, fascinated by the cute little caterpillars," Jahnke said. "They were very protective of them." 5

This year twenty men took part. A grant from the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin paid for a purpose-built enclosure the participants named the Refuge for Growth, Change and Inspiration, so its initials would match the prison's. It holds four rearing cabinets and two flower gardens, and the men grow and gather the milkweed the caterpillars eat. 25

Each butterfly stays in the enclosure at least a day after emerging; one participant, asked in a survey what release day was like, wrote: "There were so many in one area that I could even hear the wings flapping." 2 Another said the work had given him "something to make me feel like I have a purpose here, greatly improving my mental health." 5

By the third generation the programme raised, tagging was added; the men tagged 29 of the monarchs they released. 5 A tag is a small coded sticker on a hindwing. The eastern monarchs fly as far as 3,000 miles to their winter grounds in Mexico, and the record comes back only when somebody finds a tagged butterfly and reports it. 26

The part I keep coming back to is the sticker: twenty-nine went out on twenty-nine hindwings, and any of them might be read months later in a mountain forest in central Mexico by a stranger with no idea who put it there.

Another Bounce takes used racquet-sport balls from courts, clubs and households; drop-off and shipping details are at anotherbounce.org, and posted balls go to Habits of Waste Donation, 3000 31st St., Suite C, Santa Monica, CA 90405. 3

Monarch Watch runs the tagging programme the Redgranite men use. It sends tags to thousands of volunteers each fall, sells tagging kits through shop.monarchwatch.org and has a free app for recording what you tag; a found tag goes on its reporting form. The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, which paid for the enclosure, notes that monarch experts discourage raising butterflies at scale and suggest planting native milkweed for wild monarchs instead. 56