Golf Balls: The litter of the 21st Century?

interlooper

Wishing I was golfing now
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It is a good thing none of us here lose ANY balls throughout the round.

Golf balls: 'Humanity's signature litter'

Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem.

The scale of the dilemma was underlined recently in Scotland, where scientists -- who scoured the watery depths in a submarine hoping to discover evidence of the prehistoric Loch Ness monster -- were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of golf balls lining the bed of the loch.
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In many cases, removing a partially degraded ball from a lake or woodland area could result in further damage to the wildlife. So what is the solution? Harvie had this advice: "Keep your balls on the fairway or invest in a stock of biodegradable balls."
 
That is not as strange as it may seem. When out hiking, I have found golf balls is some pretty strange places. On mountain rocky sides, dry river beds, in our local lake, and areas with a lots of trees. I myself sometimes utilize a dry lake bed to check carry distances on my various clubs. Of course I always pick up the balls before I leave.
 
It is a good thing none of us here lose ANY balls throughout the round.

Golf balls: 'Humanity's signature litter'

Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem.

The scale of the dilemma was underlined recently in Scotland, where scientists -- who scoured the watery depths in a submarine hoping to discover evidence of the prehistoric Loch Ness monster -- were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of golf balls lining the bed of the loch.
....
In many cases, removing a partially degraded ball from a lake or woodland area could result in further damage to the wildlife. So what is the solution? Harvie had this advice: "Keep your balls on the fairway or invest in a stock of biodegradable balls."

Is there such a thing as a biodegradable golf ball? :confused2: I've never seen them.
 
Is there such a thing as a biodegradable golf ball? :confused2: I've never seen them.

Probably none that you would actually want to play a round with.
 
That is not as strange as it may seem. When out hiking, I have found golf balls is some pretty strange places. On mountain rocky sides, dry river beds, in our local lake, and areas with a lots of trees. I myself sometimes utilize a dry lake bed to check carry distances on my various clubs. Of course I always pick up the balls before I leave.


Did you see the guy that got busted a couple of months ago for dumping thousands of balls out in the desert by Joshua Tree?
 
Eco-friendly golf balls | Eco Friendly Golf Balls

I've got one. But, never played it. I think I may have given it to my 5yr old.

It's recyclable. But it's not biodegradable is it?

Nope. It's made of recycled materials, but not biodegradable. So if you lose it, it's still litter.

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I don't see anything about those supposed 300 million that mentions what proportion are recovered during ordinary ball searches, etc. I would bet that those numbers are simply based on sales, with no mention of balls which are retired to shag bags, driving ranges, or simply tossed in the trash when no longer deemed serviceable. Most of the balls lost in the ponds on my home course are recovered and refurbished and resold by a guy who does it for a living. Players I know don't typically report their lost balls to any data gathering agency. :rolleyes:

I'm always suspicious of numbers which have been derived from unknown or incomplete data. Most of this seems to come from a few small areas of Europe as far as you can tell from the article. How are we supposed to know how they came up with that world wide total? By extrapolation??? I don't think that really works very well when trying to relate different parts of the world.

In my opinion, if lost golf balls were the worst litter problem the world faced, it wouldn't have a litter problem. FORE!!! :golf3:
 
That's Fourputt--always the voice of reason.
 
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