How playing golf with lake balls helps the environment more than you ever imagined
Millions upon millions of golfers take to the fairways and enjoy their favourite pastime every day around the world.
The chance to play sport outdoors and within nature is what entices so many enthusiasts to take up the game in the first place.
As golf is a game played in wide open, green spaces, golf clubs have the opportunity to excel in nature conservation and sustainability.
One way in which progress can be achieved in this area is considering the use of lake balls from trusted suppliers such as Mail Order Golf.
Millions of golf balls are lost to water hazards in every country where the game is played, and while these little white spheres dwell at the bottom of ponds and lakes, they don’t decompose.
As awareness grows around sustainability and the impact of waste in general, a shift in purchasing habits in golf and choosing recycled lake balls through premium marketplaces like Mail Order Golf is emerging as a meaningful way golfers can reduce their environmental footprint.
A single golf ball contains materials equivalent to roughly three plastic water bottles or seven plastic shopping bags. Multiply that by millions, and the environmental cost becomes clear - not just in visible waste, but also in the gradual release of microplastics into ecosystems found on golf courses.
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The hard plastic shells of golf balls can persist for decades, and they represent a long-term pollutant in otherwise carefully maintained natural environments.
An example of when efforts to promote the circular life cycle of golf balls was never more evident was in Germany, at the Green Eagle Golf Course near Hamburg, where golf ball diver Nicky Dorfel retrieved over 500 balls from numerous lakes where the Porsche European Open was held on the DP World Tour.
In 2022, Dorfel did the same throughout the season. Over 30,000 balls were collected and fed into a shipping container, to demonstrate the power of saving and re-using golf balls. A year earlier, the Golfpark Weiherhof in Wadern in Germany reported that 25,000 balls were taken in a diving campaign and reprocessed as driving range balls.
Lake balls are retrieved from water hazards, cleaned, sorted, graded, and resold. While the idea might sound basic, the scale and efficiency of this process have evolved significantly over the years, with Mail Order Golf providing the access to high-quality recycled golf balls to golfers across the UK.
Golfers can choose balls that suit both their performance needs and their budget. Many of the highest-grade lake balls available through Mail Order Golf still offer performance at a significantly reduced cost.
ALSO: View all Titleist Lake Balls on Mail Order Golf
But the benefits extend far beyond affordability.
The production of new golf balls is resource-intensive, relying on fossil fuels not only for the raw materials themselves, but also for manufacturing and transportation. With oil prices continuing to rise, the environmental and economic costs of producing new balls are becoming more pronounced.
By choosing recycled lake balls, golfers can help reduce demand for newly manufactured products while still enjoying premium performance on the course.
Mail Order Golf plays an important role in supporting this circular economy by giving recovered golf balls a second life rather than allowing them to become long-term waste.
Even balls that are too damaged for play can be broken down and reused in manufacturing, ensuring that very little goes to waste.