Biodegradable Golf Tees: The Easiest Win Nobody Is Taking

GreenUp Golf — Winner of Best New Product, PGA Show 2025. Every piece made from upcycled coffee waste. The tees go into the ground and give something back. The plastic ones just stay there.

The Easiest Sustainability Win in Golf: Why Biodegradable Golf Tees Aren't on Every Shelf

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Ask a head greenkeeper what they think of biodegradable tees and watch their face. Every one I’ve spoken to lights up. These are the people who manage the land, who spend their mornings picking plastic and splintered wood out of teeing grounds, who know better than anyone what gets left behind after 150 rounds on a Saturday. They understand the problem instinctively because they live with it.

Then go to the pro shop and ask the same question. You’ll get nodding. You’ll get “yes, really interesting.” You’ll get a fascinating conversation about consumer behaviour, margin, and supplier relationships. You will not get biodegradable tees on the shelf.

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Sustainable tees for a clear conscience. Fifty reasons to stop buying plastic ones.

This is one of golf’s quieter frustrations. Greenkeepers don’t have buying power. Buyers do, and they’re working to margin, to existing supplier relationships, to what sells without needing a conversation. A product that requires explanation, however good it is, tends to lose to one that doesn’t. Golf retail is not unique in this regard. It is, however, particularly good at it.

And here’s what makes it harder to excuse than in most industries. In most clubs the shop is run by the club pro, someone who knows the game, knows the course, and knows exactly what ends up in the ground. These aren’t faceless retail buyers making decisions from a spreadsheet.

They are qualified, knowledgeable golf people. Which makes the gap between greenkeeper enthusiasm and retail inertia genuinely difficult to explain.

GreenUp Golf makes biodegradable tees from upcycled coffee grounds. They break down naturally, they perform, and they won Best New Product at the PGA Show 2025.

Kristian Kohn and his team are based in Denmark, which also means the transport footprint is a fraction of what it is for the mass-produced plastic alternatives arriving from the other side of the world. Better product, shorter journey, no planet-sized apology required at the checkout.

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The tee you use on the first tee was a coffee bean not long ago. That is not marketing. That is the actual supply chain.

Some will point to bamboo tees as the answer. Bamboo is better than wood and infinitely better than plastic, but it is still a purpose-grown crop, a notoriously thirsty one at that, harvested and shipped predominantly from Asia.

GreenUp starts with waste that already exists, travels a fraction of the distance, and as the tee breaks down it returns nutrients to the soil rather than simply disappearing from it.

That is not a marginal difference. That is a fundamentally better product and one good enough to make them the official tee partner of the ECCO Tour.

Here’s what the retail argument misses. Golfers are not as price-sensitive on a packet of tees as the buying decisions suggest. Many of us, and I include myself here, would pay a small premium without hesitation for a product that was better for the environment and caused no harm to the course. That is not a hard sell. That is a win for the golfer, a win for the greenkeeper, and a win for the retailer if they would only give it a chance.

I will go further. Pro shops and golf retailers should only stock biodegradable tees. This isn’t a niche club issue. American Golf, Nevada Bob, Sports Direct, and Decathlon collectively put more tees on more shelves than any club shop ever could.

Decathlon in particular markets itself heavily on sustainability credentials, which makes the absence of biodegradable tees in their golf range a pointed observation. If you walk into any of these retailers in 2026 and there are plastic tees on the shelf, that business is telling you something about how seriously they take sustainability, whether they mean to or not. It is a small thing. It is also a revealing one.

I have no affiliation with GreenUp, no discount code, no referral fee. I just think it’s a product that deserves to be on every pro shop shelf in the country and isn’t. That’s reason enough to write about it.

The fuller range. Tees in three sizes, a variety pack, and accessories — all made from upcycled coffee grounds. Guilt free golfing, as they put it. Hard to argue with that.

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That gap between good intentions and actual change is exactly what ChippedIn exists to close. Not by replacing how golf retail works, but by putting good products in front of golfers directly. People who, given the choice, will generally do the right thing. Most golfers are not indifferent to what they leave on the course. They just don’t always know there’s a better option.

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GreenUp is a better option. The greenkeepers already know it.

GreenUp Golf – Sustainable Golf Tees & Accessories Made from Coffee

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