Venerable golf group launches sustainability campaign
It’s easy to vilify golfers — really! try it! — but we’ve gotta give them credit: some 2,000 golf courses in 100 countries have joined a campaign that urges them to use less water, plant drought-tolerant grasses, cut out pesticides, and replace sand with recycled glass. This campaign for sustainable golf is being driven by Britain’s 250-year-old Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (the pretentiousness … it burns!), which hopes to “improve golf’s image as a polluter and abuser of vast tracts of countryside.” There are 25,000 golf courses in the world; St. Andrews governs the ones outside of the U.S. and Mexico. Critics charge that golf courses use up to seven times as much pesticides per acre as farms, and can suck up as much water as a small town. No word yet on whether the St. Andrews campaign will sway the Global Anti-Golf Movement and Anarchist Golfing Association, which we swear we are not making up.
