Whenever a player dunks their ball into a water hazard, the chances are they won’t be thinking about the environmental impact their wayward shot has had.
Research teams at the Danish Golf Union recently discovered that an average golf ball takes between 100 and 1000 years to decompose naturally, and given that there are an estimated 300 million golf balls littering the lakes of the United States, or lost in rough then golf balls clearly present a problem.
To illustrate, the Danish Golf Union devised several tests to determine the environmental impact of golf balls on their surroundings and found that as the ball degrades it releases high quantities of heavy metals, such as zinc. In the synthetic rubber centres used in solid-core golf balls, it was found that the levels of zinc reached danger levels, and when submerged in water the zinc attached itself to the ground sediment and poisoned surrounding plant and marine life.
Now, a Spanish golf ball manufacturer has developed a means to actually help the environment whenever a stray shot ends up in a watery grave with a fully biodegradeable golf ball which not only dissolves quickly in water, but has a core made of fish food! Called the ‘Ecobioball’ the ball has an outer layer constructed from a recyclable plastic polymer which can completely degrade in water in less than 48 hours claims Albert Buscato, CEO of Albus Golf.
However, don’t expect to play a round of golf with these balls just yet – the balls are lighter than standard golf balls at under 51grams meaning they don’t travel as far when hit. They have been developed to allow players to practice playing shots over water and will only survive a single stroke.
And with more than a year spent on the design and construction of the ‘Ecobioball’, there’s likely a ways to go before biodegradable golf balls become advanced enough to be able to be used during a round of golf.