Deadball started on a court in North Queensland, with a two-year-old asleep in a pram. Three nights a week, Poppy fell asleep to the pop and echo of pickleball from the courts down our road. It was her white noise before she could say the word.

She's eight now, paddle in hand every chance she gets. Somewhere along the way we both started noticing the balls that don't make it home. Cracked, dead, piling up courtside after every session. Nobody was collecting them, and no recycling program for racquet balls existed anywhere in Australia.

So we built one. The balls are polypropylene and rubber, both recyclable. The problem was never the material, it was that nothing existed to close the loop. Deadball is that loop: bins at clubs, sorted by material, processed into feedstock, remade into Dead Ball™, Australia's first 100% recycled pickleball. Pickleball first. Tennis and padel next.