Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen could hardly believe his ears when a paddle-playing acquaintance told him that he has to buy a new racket every six months. The consumption of resources associated with the popular sport puzzled the tennis-playing Mikkel, who is used to using the same racket for years.
"Any type of impairment of the racket means , you will have to throw the whole thing away. It's super bad from a sustainability perspective, but pretty good for companies that sell padel rackets," says Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen from his office space in DTU's innovation hub, Skylab, surrounded by full and half padel rackets in different colours and shapes.
Normal padel rackets are handmade and consist of a combination of carbon and glass fibre, which can be both dangerous to work with and difficult to recycle. In addition, a lot of material is lost in production, which can take up to 12 hours for a single racket.
