Where Do Lost Balls Go?

September 21, 2006 10:30 AM

What is the environmental impact of my dog's lost tennis balls?

I would estimate that my elderly border collie/heeler mutt has lost between 30 and 50 tennis balls over the years in wilderness areas, open space, city parks, etc. I do my best to find them, but he's quite proficient.

I know the main ingredients are rubber, wool and nylon - any guesses as to whether these balls eventually biodegrade? Are we wreaking environmental havoc?

posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! to science & nature (8 comments total)

I think there's some other dog owner at your local park asking his dog, "How do you always manage to fetch more tennis balls than we came here with?"
posted by winston at 10:45 AM on September 21, 2006

Well, given that I haven't bought my elderly heeler a tennis ball in almost a decade and yet the backyard/couch/food bowl (yes, she stores her balls in her food bowl) is overflowing with them, I wouldn't disregard the possibility of "recycling". From your dog to mine accounts for at least half of your throwaways, as it were. It's the golf balls I wonder about. Those can't be good.
posted by dness2 at 10:45 AM on September 21, 2006

Golf balls get recycled too. People have small businesses diving the ponds on golf courses and searching the woods to collect the used balls. The pro shops usually have a big bin of used golf balls that they sell cheap.

Overall, I doubt your dog's poor environmental stewardship has any real impact. The balls lost in parks, etc almost certainly get picked up by somebody, another dog, city sanitation worker, kids, etc. The rest will be a mystery to the person that unearths it in 400 years :)
posted by COD at 11:20 AM on September 21, 2006

They probably hatch into things like this.
(self link, sorry)

Actually I have found many things in my yard, since it housed two generations of kids and dogs before I got it. Tennis balls actually seem to be fairly sturdy, the rubber degrades fairly slowly, but the felt is usually gone. Granted, even if these are 30-40 year old balls I'm finding, I'm not sure it's much different today. The main hazard to wildlife, in my mind, would be a choking, or swallowing hazard. A quick search finds that many wildlife sites recommend tennis balls for such varied things as keeping ponds from freezing and scaring off crows. These aren't gov't sites, mind you, so take that with a grain of salt, but if wildlife lovers aren't against them, I'd assume them to be pretty benign.

Nerf and old dolls on the other hand... that stuff zombifies, man! *shivers*
posted by 1f2frfbf at 11:36 AM on September 21, 2006

Environmental havoc, yes...

Two factors:
1. The dosage makes the poison.
2. Degree of degredation.

For example, cigarette butts don't degrade quickly, but mess with the digestive system of the deer that eat them.

Parts of the tennis ball won't degrade quickly, so the structure is available for a long time. But unless they are eaten or get tangled around some creature. Most likely they end up as part of the local substrate. Ecologically, if they kill a critter or even a dozen critters, there niches will be rapidly filled unless the species is endangered.

As for the parts that do degrade more quickly - the wool is no problem, rubber is either 'natural' or, like the nylon, is a product of 'better living through chemistry.'

It's a truth of environmental toxicology that stuff which was said to be inert turns out not to be. Many petrol-based products show hormonal effects, for example. In this case a little can go a long way.

However, the quantity, and thus the dosage load you put on the environment, is so small compared to the legal loads allowed to industry, that you are an inconsequential factor in the death of Gaia. If you need to balance your karmic load, find some place to take proactive steps to reducing your ecological footprint.
posted by dragonsi55 at 11:38 AM on September 21, 2006

Should've proofread for grammar and smartass. Wondering about the consequences is a good thing, and bespeaks a kindly heart.
How about this - the joy that those lost ball have brought to small children and roving dogs is a benefit that you have given the world.
posted by dragonsi55 at 11:54 AM on September 21, 2006

Great answers so far, thanks! I should note that most of these lost balls aren't in city parks, but in more remote areas, such as National Forest trails. He's even lost a couple in the ocean.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 12:55 PM on September 21, 2006

one of the most memorable days of my life as a kid in Brooklyn was when I got the the schoolyard early one morning and the janitor decided to throw all the "roofed" balls back down to the ground all at once. I was the only one there and I must have collected over 2 dozen balls that morning. Sweet!
posted by any major dude at 1:01 PM on September 21, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]