World Amateur Team Championship supporting local sustainability in the UAE

2023

The World Amateur Team Championships (WATC) sanctioned by the IGF will this year be hosted by the Emirates Golf Federation, the governing body for golf in the UAE and held in the capital at the prestigious Abu Dhabi National Golf Club. The event, is taking advantage of the UAE’s year of sustainability, and incorporating the use of a new
to market innovation in golf tees.

Palm Tees, produced locally in the UAE through a partnership between Dormie & Palmade Biodegradable Products are taking a new approach to golf tee manufacture. The tees themselves are made from waste palm leaves that would otherwise go to landfill and other natural ingredients. Using a patent-pending formula developed by Palmade, the discarded date palm leaves are blended with biopolymers stemming from natural sources such as sugarcane and then molded into the shape of golf tees.

Traditional golf tees are usually produced either from plastic or by growing a material (typically silver birch, cedar, bamboo), with subsequent felling of that material and post processing. The benefits of these Palm Tees speak for themselves by being fully biodegradable and compostable, leveraging a non-utilised waste material that is abundant and indigenous to this region.

In addition, the tees are produced locally in the UAE reducing overseas shipping and cutting down lead times for production. Moreover, the waste palm leaves can be collected from the golf courses across the UAE, transformed into golf tees, returned back to the same golf courses and once used, biodegrade back to nature; thus promoting and enabling a more circular economy.

General Abdulla Alhashmi, Emirates Golf Federation Vice Chairman, had this to say about the use of the tees throughout the event, ‘2023 is the UAE’s year of sustainability and being able to use a locally produced, 100% natural and 100% biodegradable product for this event is helping to showcase both sustainability and innovation in the UAE. We are proud to host the event and having the Palm Tees will contribute to other initiatives we are actively looking at.'

The producers of the tees, Dormie & Palmade jointly commented, ‘the support from the Emirates Golf Federation has been phenomenal and we’re excited to have been given the opportunity to contribute to one of the biggest events on the world amateur circuit.’