Lobster-shell golf tees rival pine in lab tests

More than 1 billion wooden golf tees are thrown away every year in the US alone. Wood takes years to break down, and plastic tees fare little better: mowers shred the ones that get lost on the course and leave fragments in the soil. At the University of Maine, researchers have found a way to make the tee out of something that currently goes to waste: lobster shells.

The state of Maine's seafood industry produces approximately 50,000 tons (45,359 tonnes) of lobster shells a year, most of them landfilled. Lobster shells contain chitin, which can be processed into chitosan, a biopolymer already used in wound dressings and anti-spoilage coatings for fruit and vegetables. The team dries the shells, breaks them down, grinds them into powder and mixes that powder with other natural materials, including food dyes for coloured tees, to create a solid composite that can be molded. According to the researchers, the tees are as strong as eastern white pine and can decompose in just 30 days. They have not disclosed the exact formulation.

Molding was the hardest part. The composite behaves differently from plastics when it is heated and shaped, so it did not work with conventional equipment. The team had to develop a specialized injection molding system. In laboratory tests, production rose from 1 lb (0.45 kg) to 50 lb (22.7 kg) per hour. The researchers call this a significant improvement, but 50 lb an hour remains a low figure by industrial standards.

For fishermen and processing plants, the appeal is the revenue. Neivandt says the project aims to "create value-added products that can return revenues to those lobster fishermen as well as the processing facilities." For now, each tee is estimated to cost between 5 and 30 cents. Scaling up production is meant to lower that price and let the tees compete with conventional options on the market. The same lab has already developed biodegradable golf balls from lobster shells, which could be sold alongside them. The sources give no date for commercial production.