Reuse, Reduce, Why Not?

REUSE, REDUCE, WHY NOT?

Why we LOVE National Bank’s, “ON THE BALL” program

We recently attended the Rogers Cup in Toronto to watch an intense match between Canadian, Vasek Pospisil and Borna Coric. Though our favourite Canadian player didn’t advance, we sure had a ball of a time. Get it? The entire experience of attending a tennis match on a summer evening, walking the grounds, and learning about exciting tennis partnerships, really made for an enjoyable night out. My 8-year old daughter would agree.

In fact, after leaving the match, my daughter noticed posters for the National Bank’s, “On the ball” program, and we have been talking about this initiative as a family, ever since! If you haven’t heard of this initiative yet, we encourage you to read on because we guarantee that someone in your family, be it your child, relative, or a teacher-friend, will benefit immensely.

To begin, let’s see if you can answer this question. After a big tournament like the Rogers Cup, where do the tennis balls go? We wondered the same thing. After doing some research, we learned that if tennis balls were placed in the landfill (an answer that you may have guessed initially), they would take 2500 years to decompose.

Thanks to the National Bank, tennis balls from tournaments and clubs are collected and distributed to classrooms in Ontario and Quebec. The impact? Tennis balls used as chair slippers reduce classroom noise by 32%, from 95 to 65 decibels. The bonus? As you previously learned, these tennis balls are kept out of our landfills and reused in purposeful ways to help our students and teachers throughout the year. Who wouldn’t love this initiative?

When we told our brother (a passionate teacher) about the National Bank initiative that we were so excited about, he rolled his eyes at us and told us that he has been signing up for his classroom each year, since 2015! In 2015, our brother taught a group of students in Grade 7 and among these students, was a girl who had a hearing impairment. In addition to helping reduce the noise from chairs sliding back and forth during lessons, the tennis balls helped this one student in particular, by completely cutting out any background noise. Our brother has since encouraged his colleagues to visit the National Bank’s website to order tennis balls for their classrooms in order to make an impact for all students. We feel the same way.

Now in it’s 12th year, the National Bank has collected more than 1,769,242 tennis balls, helping to create quiet classroom environments, conducive for student learning. So let’s continue to keep the ball rolling! If you have tennis balls that you’d like to donate to this program, then you can do so by visiting any of upcoming tournaments or locations listed on the website:http://www.youth.nationalbank.ca/on-the-ball-program . Be sure to use this same website if you are a teacher or school looking to have your classrooms benefit from this program. The cost? Absolutely no cost at alll! That’s right, zero… or in tennis terms, LOVE!

If you’re as passionate about this program as we are, then share the love and be sure tell your friends and family about the many ways that we can serve up a change to help classrooms and our environment.

This post was sponsored by National Bank Canada however all thoughts and ideas are our own.