This article highlights a few guiding principles that golf club managers and superintendents as well as others in the industry should consider when discussing their sustainability efforts.

As the following conversation discusses, ecology and economy share the root word “eco”, which means “home” or “place to live”. At the root of municipal systems and urban environments is the shared desire among stakeholders to collaborate on more harmonious ways of living. Green Mechanics uses data and natural flows to facilitate life in urban environments. Enjoy Andre’s conversation with Larry Davis of Green Mechanics!

The 2023 NLT Symposium reminded its guests of the visceral and embodied feeling of inspiration - a literal “openness of breath”. The lively forum united salt of the Earth folks from around the US who are continuing to “walk the talk” in municipal golf as champions of community engagement, sustainable development, and providing great golf to more people.

The game of golf trains us in the paradigms and mindsets needed to solve global challenges and heal systems at scale. It’s taught me lessons that remain practical, personal, relational, as well as spiritual.

Golf and AI merge. Green sustainability thrives. Nature and tech unite.

(The following article was written by artificial intelligence and edited by Andre Paul)

Not all weeds are made equal. One weed (hemp) might actually become your most valuable source of cost reduction while generating multiple streams of revenue on the land your golf course isn’t currently using.

We want to live better, healthier lives that don’t cost the Earth, ultimately so that future generations can also live better, healthier lives. Andre investigates his lifestyle and eco-footprint to find ways to improve in 2023.

Andre describes his general sense impressions of LIV Miami: what he witnessed, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched at the LIV Golf Miami event in October. As a no-cut exhibition event, LIV may lack in sporting drama on the course, but it certainly makes up for it in spectacle (and drama provided off the course). It engages the senses with plenty of spectacle. Andre also gives a short playbook of possibilities for the competing tours to take advantage of sustainable innovation opportunities.

Municipal golf can become an inspiring cornerstone of how municipalities meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In the latest edition of our Sustainability Spotlight Series, we are excited to share the process, results and methodology behind the National Links Trust’s first materiality assessment and stakeholder survey, and how we used the UN SDG framework to prioritize NLT’s current and future sustainable development programs in Washington, D.C.

Thanks to $2.4 billion of Saudi-backed funding, LIV Golf has already disrupted the PGA Tour. This article explores the founding, funding, format, and future of the new golf tour, along with how it might co-exist with the PGA Tour and “traditional” golf.

Inja Fric is a rising senior on the NC State Women’s Golf Team. She is also an EcoAthlete and leader of the NC State student-athlete sustainability group. We invited her to share her sustainability story and how she is working to make a difference in her community.

For golf courses, optimal efficiency means providing the best possible experience to golfers using minimal inputs and costs. Golf’s major inputs (irrigation, energy, and chemicals) ultimately run up the score on golf’s carbon scorecard… only when this scorecard gets high it will be melting snowmen by causing higher temperatures (rather than just penciling snowmen on the golf scorecard as most of us do).

USGA Deacon can help golf courses provide better golfer experiences while at significantly lower costs to the bottom line and the environment.

Callaway Golf Company, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of golf equipment, apparel and entertainment, produced their first ever 2021 Sustainability Report two months ago. For the next installment of our Sustainability Spotlight Series, we dive into that report and offer our Driving the Green takes on what we would like to see in future reports.

Recapping the VoLo Foundation’s 2022 Climate Correction Conference:

#1 - Culture scales climate action.

#2 - The newest tech meets the oldest solutions of nature.

#3 - Climate action requires an orchestration of many solutions.

Ur-ine our thoughts, circular pee-conomy!

Pee-cycling is a part of what the Soil Factory Network and Cornell professor Dr. Rebecca Nelson refer to as the “circular bionutrient economy”, which promises an old but bold solution to closing the loop between the production and disposal of key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. In simplest terms, what now harms the environment might instead save it.

Two leaders in the landscape of PGA TOUR sustainability (AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am & WM Phoenix Open) are a great way to kick off the year - but what about the other tours? What about the rest of the year? What about the rest of the country? While many other tournaments continue to lay the groundwork for sustainability internally, from an objective standpoint, many people reading this probably wonder where the push for sustainability is coming from inside the golf industry and how do those conversations begin? What a better time to address this than my first article since attending my first PGA TOUR Meetings.

Kathy Sue McGuire started the first office recycling program in the State of Florida in 1991. For over a decade, Kathy worked for PGA National Resort (home of the Honda Classic). In that same timespan, she founded her consultancy now known as 3 Pillar Solutions, which helps clients meet sustainable development goals while improving efficiencies and making a profit.

The first annual National Links Trust ‘Symposium on Municipal Golf’ was held November 8-9, 2021 in Washington, DC. This exclusive recap discusses the takeaways, obstacles and goals emerging from this inaugural event as the golf industry works hard to preserve and reimagine the possibilities for municipal golf facilities.

We spoke with Andrew Glen, Superintendent at KDV Sports Complex on the Gold Coast of Australia to learn more about his one-of-a-kind, 100% organic golf course and how to make organic golf scalable across the industry.

In this edition of our Sustainability Spotlight series, I share the story of the National Links Trust, why Municipal Golf is the key to the golf industry’s future and what it's like to assemble a sustainability super squad for the NLT’s ‘Symposium on Municipal Golf’.

Golf's equipment manufacturers spend roughly $3B combined on selling-related activities (a simple projection based on publicly available financial data). What if they all agreed to reallocate just 1% (still a whopping $30M) toward investing in golf's future? This article highlights both why and how that should happen.

We recently connected with Agustín Pizá, world-renowned and award-winning golf course architect. He’s a heart full of fire and passion, unafraid to put some soul into his work. He also has a head full of knowledge, expertise, and ideas, so we considered ourselves fortunate to pick his brain on topics like the accessibility of golf, oneness with nature, and the future of the game.

“Beemats” – also referred to as “floating wetlands” – are a bio-mimicking technology that cleans polluted bodies of water by taking excess nutrients that seep into ponds and lakes and turns them into harvestable crops or biomass. What are the benefits, costs and how might this technology transform golf course sustainability?

For the foreseeable future, golf courses will face increasing pressure on reducing the usage of water (especially freshwater), maximizing the efficiency of land use, and building resilience for drought and flooding (as a result of increasingly irregular weather patterns). Here are seven surprising solutions to reframe those challenges through exciting design opportunities.

The golf industry need not look further than the first tee to find one of the world’s leading sustainability champions, the PGA TOUR’s WM Phoenix Open. Recognized as one of the five oldest tournaments on the TOUR (the first Phoenix Open was in 1932) and annual host to over 700,000 fans, title sponsor WM has led the Phoenix Open to be the world’s largest zero waste event.

At least 35% of the food we eat is directly dependent on the pollination services of bees. With their numbers in decline, might a symbiotic relationship with golf be the change needed to restore their numbers?