LTA Pledgeball League 2025 is live

Ilminster Bowling & Tennis Club claim first place in the opening round of the LTA Pledgeball League 2025, securing a £250 grant to spend on sustainability project.

Building on last year's introduction of a bike rack and wildflower desginated area at the club, designed to encourage biodiversity, the pledges made by members at Ilminster equate to saving over 26,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions, which is the quivalent to driving around the Earth three times in a petrol car! 

When speaking to Ilminster Tennis Club chair, Gill Dunn, on the venue's third victory in the LTA Pledgeball League she said, "It is a source of great pride that following on from our successes in previous years, Ilminster has topped the LTA Pledgeball League once again. We see this as a positive reflection on how our members are continue to see sustainability as a big part of our club's long-term culture.

"Ilminster is a small town in Somerset with a population of approximately 6,000. However, it unfortunately hit the main news channels in January this year when flash flooding caused devastation and extensive water damage to homes and businesses in parts of the town. This brings home the reality of how the climate crisis is impacting our communities and how we can make a difference, however small, to reduce these environmental changes.

"In our efforts to be as sustainable as possible, the club has had solar panels installed, designated a wildflower area around the car park to support biodiversity, installed bike racks by the tennis courts to encourage members to cycle to the venue and recently replaced the floodlights on our three tennis courts with LEDs via funding obtained from community grants and previous Pledgeball wins. The next project is the car parking lights upgrade to LEDs to further demonstrate our commitment to quality and sustainability.

"Discussions are also taking place via a project group lead by Katie Cross, Pledgeball CEO to ascertain ways to involve the community with the Club's sustainability work and how the Club can learn from the work already taking place locally around us. As previously documented, we would encourage all clubs to take part in the LTA Pledgeball League - and see the difference each pledge can make."

Greenwood Park Tennis Club took second place, along with a £150 grant, which they using to help support tennis ball recycling at the club. In third, Priory Tennis Club, taking £100 back to their venue to spend on increasing their sustainability.

The total pledges in June equate to over 117,200kg of carbon dioxide emissions being saved, the equivalent of air-drying 2.34 million loads of laundry instead of using a tumble dryer.

This year has already seen the greatest engagement across Great Britain, with more players at tennis and padel venues pledging than ever before, and there are still three rounds to go!

The members of Ilminster Bowling & Tennis Club continue to rally together with more nature-friendly pledges being made than the previous round. The total pledges made from this months title winners equated to saving over 35,000kg in carbon dioxide emissions, that's the equivalent to lighting 70 football stadiums for a full match!

On discussing Ilminster's second win of the year the Chair of the Ilminster Tennis Club, Gill, said, "Wow! The club is so proud to have back to back wins for June and July, and of course is aiming to retain its podium position for August and achieve a hat trick!

"This win is very timely in that Tennis club members met earlier this week to discuss future sustainable projects, including the addition of water butts around the site, LED lights in the tennis pavilion, a bug hotel, and providing reusable bottles to our junior members which will hopefully also prove to promote the Club's junior section.

"The £250 from the June win is already being put to good use as work starts soon to replace the car park lighting with LEDs thus providing energy efficient and environmentally friendly lighting for both Club users and local residents."

The venue, based in Somerset, takes home yet another £250 grant to spend on making the club even more sustainable. Whilst Victoria Park (Bristol) and West of Scotland Seniors LTC, take in second and third place respectively. 

Victoria Park in Bristol is a non-profit organisation run by volunteers and local residents. The members of Victoria Park have pledged to offset over 2,280kg of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of leaving your laptop running for 38,000 hours!

Helen, on behalf of Victoria Park, says, "VPTC is pleased to be runner up in the LTA Pledgeball League July 2025. We are keen to make our club as sustainable as we can and this money will further help us achieve this.

"Until recently, our courts had no shelter so we set out to build one on an overgrown area by the courts, and created a wildlife garden beside it. With FSC wood, the shelter's roof collects rainwater into a huge barrel for watering the garden in dry spells. We have two hedgehog houses and the garden is planted with pyracantha, berberis, buddleia and wildflowers to attract birds and butterflies.

"We were keen to provide the garden as the shelter replaces an area previously overgrown with wild bramble. Also in recent years we've installed cycle parking by our entrance to enable players to park their cycles closer to the courts.

"Although most plants have come through the exceptionally dry summer of 2025, we would spend the award money topping up with some more pollinator and drought tolerant plants such as lavender, rosemary and poached egg."

Greenwood Park Lawn Tennis Club (LTC) is a friendly neighbourhood tennis club aimed at meeting the needs of the local community. The club actively recycles old tennis balls, with the proceeds of this sustainable action being donated to charity.

The members of Greenwood Park LTC have pledged to save 47,918kg of carbon dioxide emissions, that's over 50 tonnes of CO2, the same amount of energy saved could power an average UK home for 10 years!

Second place in the August league after a great run of form in the first two rounds, Ilminster Bowling & Tennis Club's members have pledged to save over 27,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of air drying over 20,000 loads of washing as opposed to using a tumble dryer.

Elms Lawn Tennis Club came third in this round. Elms LTC is a small, vibrant and friendly club, a short distance from Taunton town centre. The members pledged to save over 12,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions last month, the equivalent of avoiding 38,800 single-use plastic bottles.

Cathy, chair of Elms LTC, says, "We will be using the money from the grant to explore how we can reduce our water usage at the club.

"We have four grass courts and have needed to water them extensively this summer which has been astronomically expensive and of course has not made any use of the copious amount of water we have had on them at other times of the year - the courts have suffered from flooding and washing away of nutrients in the spring this year.

"So the grant will kickstart our focus over the next year to try and collect water to be used for watering and make our watering system as efficient as possible. Other ways of protecting the grass over periods when it is really dry will also be explored.

"We are a small grass court club surrounded by trees, grass and a wildflower meadow. Our club needs to fit in with our environment and all our volunteers work together to maintain sustainable habitats and encourage biodiversity."

In an incredibly close final round of the 2025 LTA Pledgeball League, Ilminster Bowling & Tennis Club clinch the victory.

Celebrating their third win of this year's league, Gill Dunn, Chair of Ilminster Tennis Club, said, "We are currently purchasing water butts and converting to LED lights in our pavilion.  Our next ambition is to source sustainable water bottles with our club logo affixed to give to our junior members when they join the club."

Despite the members at Redland Green Club pledging to save a total of 75,118kg of CO2 emissions, the number of members per court at Ilminster, that made a pledge, exceeded that of Redland Green.

Previous round winners Greenwood Park LTC came a valiant third. Their venue pledging to offset more than 22,000kg of carbon dioxide emissions.

The chair of Greenwood Park LTC, Gillian, said, "Greenwood Park are very delighted to have got another grant in recognition of our members pledging and advising the LTA of the many ways that they are helping to ensure we minimise our negative impact on the environment."

The club is in a lovely location in a park with mostly local members who can, and do, walk or cycle to the club and lift sharing for away matches is strongly encouraged.  Although the majority of club members use re-usable water bottles, the club are implementing on-court recycling bins to ensure that any recyclable waste can be disposed of with ease. This initative will sit alongside other planet friendly motions at the venues such as; the commonly used bike rack, the recent intrisucted of LED lighting in the store room, the water fountain by the clubhouse and the tennis ball recycling bin located in the venue.

"We are going to be publicising this more to ensure members – and also visitors, as we have one of our courts available to the general public to book and play on – do re-cycle everything and not put items into the rubbish bins which we already have on the courts.  The purchase of these new re-cycling bins will take the majority of our grants.

"The total of £500 that we have had from the LTA Pledgeball League has enabled us to do the above, and participating in the league has highlighted to our members the many things we can do to help with sustainability."

The venues involved with the final round of year pledged to save over 140,000kg of carbon dioxide, that is the roughly equivalent the carbon footprint of manufacturing about 52,000 pressurised tennis balls, that’s enough balls to cover every match at Wimbledon for an entire fortnight!

Did you know?

As a sport, we throw away an estimated fifteen million tennis balls each year in GB. Most balls will only be played with for 4-6 hours on court, but each ball can take up to 300 years to degrade in landfill. 

The LTA has been looking at solutions to this problem and following successful pilots we would like you to meet our LTA recommended ball recycling services: Circularball and DYUCE.