A Sustainable Legacy: 2024 World Table Tennis for Health Festival Champions Honoured with Eco-Conscious Awards
As the 2024 World Table Tennis for Health Festival wrapped up in Maizières-lès-Metz, France, a unique and sustainable innovation took center stage in the award ceremony. This year’s winners of the Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Championships in the Festival received medals crafted from broken table tennis balls, a testament to the sport’s commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship which found roots in the host of the 2023 event.
This special initiative was conceived from a partnership between the ITTF Foundation and the Hellenic Table Tennis Federation through their National Recycled Table Tennis Balls Initiative. After the 2023 World Table Tennis for Health Festival in Crete, Greece, clubs across Greece have been collecting broken and unusable plastic table tennis balls. Instead of these damaged balls ending up as waste, they were given new life through an innovative process that transforms them into 3D printer filament – the raw material for creating the medals.
The process behind these unique medals is a powerful example of circular economy principles at work within the sports community. Through a meticulous process, the Hellenic Table Tennis Federation gathered and consolidated broken table tennis balls from clubs nationwide. These plastic fragments were then processed and melted down to produce filament suitable for 3D printing. The medals were 3D-printed from this sustainable filament, a tangible embodiment of the commitment to reducing waste and fostering environmentally friendly practices within the world of table tennis.
As one of the ITTF Foundation’s core values, sustainability is central to our mission. By introducing these eco-conscious medals at the 2024 World Table Tennis for Health Festival, we made an important step forward in fostering a more sustainable and environmentally friendly world. Each medal not only serves as a prize but also provides a second life to the broken table tennis balls, embodying and symbolizing the efforts and passion that the table tennis community put into its beloved sport and the planet. It is a project that reflects how innovative solutions in table tennis can make meaningful contributions to global environmental efforts, showing that every smash, serve, and rally can leave a lasting, positive impact beyond the table.
In addition to this project, there are other sustainable initiatives happening within the global table tennis community. Visit ITTF Sustainability - Case Studies to discover more inspiring stories.