Recycling Polyester Tennis Ball Containers Fred H. Greenberg SUNY College at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14222 Abandoned polyester tennis ball containers that accumulate on campus tennis courts may be used in the undernraduate laboratory as dispensing or storage receptacleL for a variety of items including corks, pipets, vials, cotton, chromatography columns, filter paper, student preparations, melting point capillaries, rubber stoppers, and indicator papers. One hole or two holes an inch apart are punched near the top of the container with a paper punch and the polyester cylinders are mounted with hooks, twist ties, or pipe cleaners on three 2- X 2-ft pegboards that have been wired into a triangle that stands upright without additional support (Fig. 1).Since a section of the flexible cylinder can be
inserted into a portion of another container, a receptacle of any reasonable size can be achieved. The rather sharp metal rim of the container can be cut off to prevent accidental skin injuries and replaced with the bottom of another container as~acover. Of course, polyester soft drink bottles could serve just as well as the tennis ball containers. The tennis ball container also provides a convenient holder for overhead projector pens that tend to be easily misplaced. Pen caps are attached with strapping tape to a polyester strip that is stapled into a "bracelet"of the appropriate size. This bracelet is then worn on the nonwriting hand or wrist and used much as an artist might use a palette (Fig. 2).
Figure 1. Pegboard triangle suppolting tennis ball containers.
Figure 2. Penholder at the overhead projector.
Volume 66 Number 2
February 1969
167
