A Maine lobster can end up in a roll, a bisque or a butter bath. At the University of Maine, what’s left of it can now end up under a golf ball.
Researchers at UMaine are making golf tees from discarded lobster shells.
The project builds on more than a decade of UMaine research into new uses for an underutilized byproduct of Maine’s lobster industry.
Maine’s lobster industry generates an estimated 50,000 tons of shells each year, and some processing facilities pay to dispose of them in landfills. UMaine researchers have explored using lobster shell composites in products ranging from agricultural to temporary or single-use products.
With the golf tees, they are also examining whether the material could create new economic opportunities across the lobster industry supply chain, contributing to Maine’s blue economy by finding new uses and potential markets for material generated by one of the state’s signature marine industries.
“What we’re doing in this project is using an underutilized waste material from the fishing industry, from the lobster industry,” said project lead David Neivandt. “We are trying to create value-added products that can return revenues to those lobster fishermen as well as the processing facilities.”
From lobster shells to golf tees
Led by Neivandt, faculty and student researchers are using a proprietary process to combine powdered lobster shells with other natural materials into a solid composite that can be molded into golf tees and other shapes.
The shells are provided by Shucks Maine Lobster Company, dried, broken into pieces, ground and sifted before the powder is incorporated into the composite. Natural food dyes may be added during the mixing process to produce tees in different colors.
The researchers are comparing the lobster-shell tees with existing wood and plastic tees to assess their mechanical performance. Gregory Simms, a doctoral candidate in materials sciences and engineering and staff member at UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, has worked on testing and improving the composite.
Golf tees are small, but the number used and discarded makes their environmental footprint worth considering. More than 1 billion wooden tees are discarded annually in the United States alone. Plastic tees do not rot, and broken pieces can remain on courses where they pose risks to wildlife and maintenance equipment.
Some golf courses have even banned plastic tees because of environmental concerns.
“Many courses just blow broken golf tees into the rough, so when that area gets mowed, the tee material is shredded and left on the soil,” Simms said.
Designed to perform and break down
When exposed to the elements on a golf course or in nearby brush, the lobster-shell tees break down in about 30 days. By comparison, conventional wooden tees can take years to degrade, while plastic tees can persist much longer. As the composite breaks down, minerals and other nutrients naturally found in lobster shells and in the binder are released into the soil.
The material also has to be strong enough to perform like a conventional tee. Simms said the original composite needed improvement to match the mechanical performance of eastern white pine. Researchers adjusted the production process and added other natural materials, resulting in a composite that surpassed the strength of golf tees traditionally made from eastern white pine.
“The production line designed and built in the first year allowed us to make simple processing adjustments and incorporate other natural additives, enabling the composite to exceed eastern white pine in flexural strength, compression strength and shear strength,” Simms said.
Scaling up a new manufacturing process
The team operates a laboratory-scale injection molding system developed with help from UMaine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center. Because the lobster-shell composite cannot be processed using conventional injection molding equipment, researchers had to develop a system specifically for the material.
“The limitation that we have is that, because of its unusual rheological properties, it is not amenable to traditional injection molding equipment. So we’ve had to build our own injection molding system at the lab scale,” said Neivandt, interim dean of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing.
Researchers have already increased production of the composite from 1 pound per hour to approximately 50 pounds per hour.
“The next step is to design and build the tooling capable of turning that production volume into golf tees at a rapid pace,” Simms said.
At the laboratory scale, each tee currently costs an estimated 5 to 30 cents to produce. Researchers hope higher-volume production will lower that cost enough to compete with conventional wood and plastic tees. Increasing output would also provide enough tees for expanded testing and feedback from potential customers and industry partners.
The group’s efforts were supported by the National Science Foundation New England Region Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program and the MIRTA research accelerator program at UMaine, with funding provided by the Specialized Materials and Manufacturing Alliance for Resilient Technologies SM2ART program, a partnership between UMaine and Oak Ridge National Laboratory focused on bio-based manufacturing.
From research project to potential product
Researchers hope to continue testing the lobster-shell golf tee technology before pursuing initial sales, then license it to an industrial partner or potentially spin it out as a company.
The commercialization work has also given students experience translating the research for potential stakeholders and broader audiences.
Isabelle Irani, a graduate student at UMaine who was named one of the university’s 2026 co-salutatorians, said working through the MIRTA program helped her learn to communicate complex technical information to people outside the field.
“Through the MIRTA program, I grew skills that allow me to translate ‘tech-talk’ into a description of the innovation that demonstrates how meaningful it is,” she said.
Neivandt, interim dean of the Maine College of Engineering and Computing, hopes to use the team’s composite material binding and molding systems to develop additional single- and short-term-use products from lobster shells and other waste materials.
Story by William Bickford, graduate student writer
Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu
