Signing Mother Earth's Death Certificate...

I'm always firing golf balls back and forth in my yard - 35 yard pitch shots mostly.

Occasionally, I skull one into the woods - or into the house, or car. And once in a while, I'll intentionally smash one, or ten, irretreiveably into the trees. These are shag balls, so who cares right?

Just today I was pondering how many hundreds (more?) of golf balls I've sent into the trees....and I laughed that it is probably an *environmental catastrophe*, in the minds of some eco-pagans anyway.

Most ironically, look what headline was listed atop today's Drudge Report:

London, England (CNN) -- Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem.

With an increasing number of golf balls discarded each year, the Danish Golf Association devised a number of tests to determine the environmental impact of golf balls on their surroundings.

It was found that during decomposition, the golf balls dissolved to release a high quantity of heavy metals. Dangerous levels of zinc were found in the synthetic rubber filling used in solid core golf balls. When submerged in water, the zinc attached itself to the ground sediment and poisoned the surrounding flora and fauna.

I'm a half step ahead of these Morons!

What's next, organic golf balls?

Tees made from recycled wood? Solar powered golf carts?

Remember, some people really hate golf.

Crossposted on Marginalizing Hackers.