When USTA Southern California came to us, they were on a mission to meaningfully reduce their waste, and had a simple but genuinely hard problem: thousands of pounds of materials like tennis ball cans going straight into the trash after tournaments. At the same time, they hand out thousands of medals every season to celebrate players, every single one made from virgin plastic.
We said: what if the medallions were made from the plastic cans those same players threw in the trash on their way off the court?
They said an enthusiastic yes. What followed was one of the most technically challenging, emotionally rewarding projects we've ever taken on.
MATERIAL NO ONE WANTED TO TOUCH
Tennis ball canisters are made from PET #1 (Polyethylene Terephthalate) the same clear, rigid plastic used in beverage containers. It's technically recyclable. In practice, though, it’s much harder to execute. Labels, adhesives, mixed materials, and contamination mean these canisters end up in landfills at scale.
We also worked with Midori canisters, a more sustainable PET variant that's translucent rather than clear. Used together, the two materials create a subtle marbling effect. Every medallion that comes out of our process is genuinely one of a kind.
Here's what made this technically hard: PET has an extremely narrow processing window (the margin between solid plastic and liquid to injection mold). That limits the maximum volume of each piece, requires precise temperature control, and leaves almost no room for error. It’s unforgiving, some of the most finicky post-consumer plastic in circulation.
THE PROCESS MATTERS
The hardest part of upcycling is building the systems to work with these materials.
There was no playbook for this. We designed the system in partnership with USTA: Collection. Sorting. Breakdown. Reprocessing. Measuring. Finishing. Quality control. Each step had to be designed and streamlined. What we now have is a repeatable, scalable process for turning post-consumer PET waste from sporting events into premium awards that mean something.
Along the way, we solved real problems: Burned materials. Imperfections in the molds. Difficult extraction. Sinkholes in the plastic. Shredding wasn’t working in the injection machine. We did the R+D to fix them. That's the hard work of upcycling, committing to using these materials even when they’re significantly more complex than using virgin materials.
The USTA project proved that this is possible and beautiful. The medallions work. Players love them. The sustainability story is tangible. Two actual tennis ball cans, collected from actual tournaments, transformed into one incredible award.
THE USTA MEDALLION IS THE FIRST OF ITS KIND.
The USTA is a dream partner that genuinely cares about sustainability, and invested in the R+D process to create something truly new and unique. Their care for the environment and the process is deep. The great thing is that this process is now scalable and for future events, it isn't a new expense. It's a swap. Same budget, but completely different story and impact.
The sustainability narrative becomes tangible, a physical object made from the actual materials of the sport, by hand, in Los Angeles.
Rewilder is a small team run by women, based in Los Angeles, hand-crafting products from salvaged materials. We are a design and manufacturing studio that does what factories won't: take on the hard material problems and solve them.
Rewilder is handcrafted in Los Angeles from 100% upcycled materials.
If you want to collaborate with us, please reach out: hello@rewilder.com
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