GM Asks... How Can My Golf Course Be More Environmentally Friendly?

With a progressive approach, all golf clubs can deliver greater on-course sustainability and increased biodiversity, even on a limited budget

- Fergus Bisset

In a changing world, there’s an ever more urgent requirement for increased environmental sustainability across every aspect of human activity. Golf must be seen to be making all possible efforts in this direction.

Golf courses occupy large swathes of land. It’s a fact those who would use the sport as a punch bag portray as a negative. But golf should be able to provide a robust rebuttal to the critics. Our sport is custodian of large tracts of green belt. If these areas are managed in a sustainable way, no other sport has the ability to lock up so much carbon and, with the correct approach, courses can be environmental sanctuaries.

Smaller clubs may see an environmental programme as low priority; something only wealthier courses and clubs can afford the luxury of rolling out. Banchory Golf Club in Aberdeenshire has proven this is not the case.

With a limited budget, it is one of the few non-championship venues to have become Golf Environmental Organisation (GEO) Certified. The club has also received a GEO Sustainability Champion award – one of a small number of facilities to gain such an accolade.

At the 2020 Golf Environment Awards, Banchory was the winner in the Operation Pollinator category and course manager Richard Mullen was a finalist in the Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year category. Richard was also winner of the BIGGA Excellence award for communication within the local community, introducing school and nursery children to golf and its biodiversity.

Golf Monthly spoke to Richard about the initiatives at Banchory that have led to national recognition and to find out how, at relatively low cost, average clubs in the UK can focus on ecological and environmental projects.

Changing times