Environmental effects of basketballs

This article details the effect that basketballs have on the environment. The main component examined is butyl rubber.
Overview of importance
Millions of basketballs are disposed of every year due to general wear and tear, damage to the internal bladder, or simply upgrading to a new and better basketball. 450 million people in the world play basketball on the competition or grassroots level. Since the average basketball contains about 10 oz of butyl rubber,if every one of these players throws away even one basketball 3 year span, this amasses 281,250,000 pounds of butyl rubber waste! This number may seem high, but estimating only one basketball thrown away per player is extremely conservative.
Almost all basketballs are composed mainly of an internal bladder with outer surfaces composed of varying materials. These bladders are almost universally made of the same substance . There are many characteristics that the bladder substance must have which are why all bladders are made of the same substance. This substance is Butyl Rubber. Since butyl rubber is the sole material used to make the basketball bladders , when basketballs are thrown away, butyl rubber is thrown away in the process. If even harmless materials can make a difference in large amounts, millions of pounds of a substance as interesting as butyl rubber can have a serious impact on the environment.
Natural rubber
Natural rubber consists of C<sub>5</sub>H<sub>8</sub> units, each containing one double bond in the cis confirmation. The Vulcanization process made both cis and trans possible. Isobutylene and isoprene are usually obtained by from natural gases or lighter fractions of crude oil through thermal cracking. At normal temperature and pressure isobutylene is a gas and isoprene is a volatile liquid. Isobutylene must be refrigerated to around −100 °C because it is such a volatile liquid and is a gas at normal temperature and pressure. The main curative used in basketball bladder production is sulfur.
Butyl rubber’s resistance to environmental breakdown
IIR is as strong as natural rubber. This is based on several chemical factors. Butyl rubber’s base polymer is polyisobutylene, which is stereoregular. Stereoregular polymers have an ordered arrangement of pendant groups along the chain. Stereoregular polymers are usually very strong. These polymers can be packed much closer together because of their simple and uniform structure. Unsaturated groups mean double bonds between carbons in this case. More specifically, the only carbon-carbon double bond is located between located in each isopropene repeating unit . This lack of unsaturated groups may be the most important aspect of the chemical structure. It is certainly one of the most important aspects in relation to environmental breakdown.{. The recycled butyl rubber yields rubber scrap. It is often used to reduce noise pollution, but many manufacturers buy the rubber scrap to use in manufacturing their products Using the same ball for multiple games would reduce waste, but basketball recycling has much more potential. Companies like Wilson and Spalding already sell basketballs made from up to forty percent recycled rubber. The higher this percentage gets, the more waste that is being reduced.
Conclusion
Basketball manufacturing companies need to continue increasing the amount of recycled butyl rubber used in their basketball bladders. There will always be some loss and waste, but recycling even half of all butyl rubber bladders would remove millions of pounds of waste from the environment. Recycled rubber scrap is bought for significantly cheaper prices than new synthetic butyl rubber, so money is not an obstacle. Butyl rubber is such a perfect material for making basketballs that it is unlikely that a new material be made in the near future. This has not raised significant scientific alarm as butyl rubber has not been found to be especially harmful to the environment.<ref name="Chemistry of industrial" /> However, Butyl rubber simply sitting in a landfill somewhere is a waste of environmental space and chemical synthetic resources. Recycling basketballs and, therefore, butyl rubber would reduce the amount of butyl rubber that needs to be synthesized. Basketball is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Recycling basketballs used by the 450,000,000 basketball players worldwide has the potential to eliminate hundreds of millions of pounds of basketball per year.

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