How Many Range Balls Are Lost in New Zealand Every Year? (And What Vollē Is Doing About It)
If you’ve ever stepped foot on a driving range, you’ve likely launched a ball or two into the abyss. Multiply that by millions of swings across the country, and you start to see the scale of the problem.
The Hidden Cost of Driving Range Balls
Driving ranges are where golfers fine-tune their game, test clubs, or just blow off steam after work. But behind every satisfying strike is a ball that has to be tracked, collected, and reused, until it can't be.
Between shanks into the bush, balls buried in muddy ground, damage from wear, or those simply vanishing into ponds and scrub, tens of thousands of range balls are lost across New Zealand each year. While there's no official count, operators we’ve spoken to state a significant portion of their ball inventory disappears or becomes unusable annually. For larger facilities, that can mean thousands of balls lost per year.
Where Do Lost Balls Go?
Many end up:
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Buried underground and chewed up by mowers
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Sitting at the bottom of lakes or ponds
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Cracked, cut, or split from repeated use
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Discarded to landfill once deemed unusable
The lifespan of a standard range ball is already limited. And without a circular system in place, these balls simply become another waste stream.
Vollē's Answer: Recycled Range Balls
That’s where Vollē comes in.
We’ve built a system that gives old range balls a new life. Our recycled range ball program takes damaged or retired range balls and breaks them down into raw material, which we then reprocess into durable, high-performance range balls.
The result: a 100% recycled ball made specifically for driving ranges, with all the feel and flight players expect, but without the waste.
Closing the Loop: Send Us Your Old Balls
We’re now working with ranges around New Zealand to create a retrieval and recycling pipeline. If you're a range operator with crates of unplayable balls lying around, you’ll soon be able to ship them back to us, and we’ll handle the rest.
This means less waste, less cost in the long run, and a story your players can get behind.
Why It Matters
Golf already struggles with its environmental reputation. Vollē is here to challenge that. We believe sustainability shouldn’t come at the cost of performance or style and our recycled range balls are just one way we’re proving that.
Want to learn more about our recycled range program or join the pilot? Contact us now.