Golf courses are thirsty. The average 18-hole course in California drinks 90 million gallons of water a year—enough to fill 136 Olympic pools. For decades, the sport has been synonymous with environmental excess: manicured lawns, chemical runoff, mountains of trash from galleries and hospitality.
Then came the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
For 12 years running, this Arizona tournament has achieved something most sporting events don't even attempt: zero waste to landfills. Every bottle, every food scrap, every piece of cardboard gets diverted through recycling, composting, or energy conversion. In 2024, it earned formal certification from UL Solutions, the third-party standard that actually means something.
How a golf tournament became a waste lab
It started as an experiment. Lee Spivak, who oversees advisory services at Waste Management, saw the Phoenix Open as a testing ground—a place to try new ideas at scale before rolling them out elsewhere. "It's very much our lab," he told the Associated Press. "We'll try an idea, try an approach. Then we'll scale it up here and take it to other customers."
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Start Your News DetoxOne breakthrough came from the famous 16th hole, where thousands of spectators pack stadium-style seating and drink, eat, and cheer for hours. The tournament installed a system to recycle greywater from the kitchens and hospitality bars, capturing what would normally vanish into drains and reusing it. It's the kind of unglamorous infrastructure that actually moves the needle.
What makes this matter beyond Arizona: Waste Management took what worked at the Phoenix Open and started scaling it. The company has now partnered with Major League Baseball to reduce waste and carbon footprint across 15 ballparks. Fifteen. That's not a pilot project anymore—that's a template spreading through American sports.
Spivak sees it differently. "When they start to care, the ripple effect of the influence doesn't really end," he said. "It just keeps getting bigger and bigger."
That's the real story here. One tournament proved the model works. Now the model is moving.
