The seafood industry in the state of Maine generates approximately 50,000 tons (45,359 tonnes) of lobster shells every year, most of which end up in landfills. Researchers at the University of Maine believed there had to be a better use for this waste. They spent over a decade exploring new ways to give those shells a second life and came up with … golf tees.

The idea of recycling lobster, crab, or shrimp shells isn’t exactly new. One of their main components is chitin, which can be processed into a biopolymer called chitosan. Chitosan has found applications such as wound dressings, self-healing paint, and anti-spoilage coatings for fruit and vegetables.

But why golf tees, of all things?

These tiny objects contribute to global waste more than you might imagine. They are typically made of wood or plastic, and neither material is ideal. Wooden tees don’t last very long on the golf course, and they can take years to decompose. For those who prefer the numbers, more than 1 billion wooden tees are discarded every year in the US alone.

Plastic tees are more durable, but they eventually break too. Because of how small they are, many never get picked up. Instead, lawn-mowing machines shred them, leaving plastic fragments in the soil for a very long time. Some golf courses even banned plastic tees entirely because of their environmental impact. All in all, there is definitely room for a better alternative.

The challenge of making golf tees from lobster shells came down to two main things: they needed to be durable but also able to decompose quickly without harming the environment. According to the researchers, the lobster-shell tees they developed are as strong as those made from eastern white pine and can decompose in just 30 days.

The process starts with drying the shells and breaking them down into smaller pieces. These pieces are then ground into a powder and mixed with other natural materials, including food dyes for producing tees in different colors, to create a solid composite that can be molded into the desired shape – a golf tee. For now, the researchers aren’t disclosing the exact formulation.

Molding the material was another challenge. Because the lobster-shell composite behaves differently from plastics when heated and shaped, it turned out to be incompatible with traditional equipment. To overcome this challenge, the researchers had to develop a specialized injection molding system.

The new method has shown quite promising results in laboratory tests. The research team has managed to speed up production of the composite from 1 lb (0.45 kg) to 50 lb (22.7 kg) per hour. This is a significant improvement, but those are still relatively low numbers by industrial standards.

For now, the estimated cost of a single tee ranges from 5 to 30 cents. The researchers are hoping to scale up manufacturing further, which will bring the cost down and allow the lobster-shell tees to compete with conventional options on the market. They could then even be used with biodegradable lobster-shell golf balls, which were previously developed at the University of Maine.

“What we’re doing in this project is using an underutilized waste material from the fishing industry, from the lobster industry,” says lead scientist David Neivandt. “We are trying to create value-added products that can return revenues to those lobster fishermen as well as the processing facilities.”

Source: University of Maine