There are a number of things to consider when purchasing a new disc: Speed, glide, turn, fade, and whether or not this piece of plastic will prove to be the tipping point that leads to environmental Armageddon.
Okay, so your purchasing experience may not be clouded with apocalyptic thoughts, but factoring the environment into your buying decisions is something more players – and more companies – are starting to do. So what eco-friendly discs are out there, and which ones are the eco-friendliest of them all?
Post Navigation
- Disc golf discs made with recycled trash (i.e., post-consumer plastic)
In Detail | In Brief - Disc golf discs made with recycled post-industrial plastic (i.e., plastic recycled by manufacturers before it's sold to consumers)
In Detail | In Brief - Disc golf discs made with bioplastics (i.e., non-fossil-fuel-based plastics)
- Disc golf discs made with recycled rubber (post-industrial and post-consumer)
- Where to buy used discs golf discs
What Is an Eco-Friendly Disc Golf Disc?
An "eco-friendly disc" is one that helps reduce the amount of new plastic used in disc production.
Just about every disc we toss over hills and down tree-lined alleys while enjoying the beautiful outdoors is made of plastic. As disc golf continues to grow, so does the demand for this non-biodegradable material that is most commonly made from fossil fuels – substances inextricably linked with environmental degradation and climate change.
And while there are many companies and lines of discs claiming to reduce this demand, not all of them are doing so in the same ways. Keep reading to learn about the various sorts of eco-friendly disc golf discs or jump to a section in our post navigation.
Recycled Disc Golf Discs Made With Trash (i.e., Post-Consumer Plastic)
When you think of disc golf discs made from recycled plastic, you likely picture the stuff people toss in recycling bins and garbage cans being transformed into discs. However, extremely few manufacturers use former trash – or "post-consumer" plastic – in their recycled lines. There are currently two main players in this field: Trash Panda and Above Ground Level Discs (AGL).
Trash Panda founder Jesse Stedman filled us in on why there's so little competition in this space. Turning post-consumer plastic into a usable disc golf disc can be a tricky process as there are thousands of different types of plastic that are all manufactured for a specific purpose.
"Every single plastic, from your reusable water bottle to your single-use water bottle to your straw to your bottle cap to your pill bottle to your trash can – every single type of plastic is engineered for a specific purpose and discs are no different," Stedman explained. "Discs are engineered to fly reliably."
Below is a video of Stedman making a disc from garbage he found on a disc golf course early on in his Trash Panda journey. Before you watch, it's worth knowing that today the company has a large workspace and professional machinery.
It took years of experiments (many of which are documented on Trash Panda's YouTube channel) and experience for Stedman to release the first Trash Panda disc for sale, the Inner Core putter. Since then, the company has released three more molds (a midrange, a distance driver, and a more experimental disc) and achieved B Corp Certification, which is granted by a non-profit that assesses companies' "social and environmental impact."
Notably, though Stedman asserted that "100% of our discs 100% of the time" are made of recycled material, not all of it is post-consumer. Trash Panda also uses post-industrial recycled plastic (click or tap to learn more about what that means in the next section) that comes from other businesses.
AGL Discs, the only other well-known manufacturer using post-consumer plastic in disc golf discs, has a wider lineup than Trash Panda – seven putters, three midranges, and five drivers at time of publication. Their discs, too, usually consist of a mix of post-consumer and post-industrial plastic though they sometimes use new bioplastic made from hemp. You can learn more about AGL in our profile of the company.
Something else eco-conscious disc golfers should consider is that Trash Panda intentionally doesn't use hot stamping to decorate or brand its discs due to environmental concerns with the foil used in the hot stamping process. You'll find the disc and company names incorporated into the mold on the underside of the discs. AGL does hot stamp but recycles the foil for use in its metal flake line, which still increases the demand for foil but at least doesn't create more waste by throwing it away.
One lesser-known brand that uses post-consumer plastic in discs is Ocean Discs. This U.K. company had one mold on the market as of publication, the Sea Turtle midrange. The company's discs incorporate 60% post-consumer waste plastic removed from oceans with the remainder being new plastic. Check out our profile of Ocean Discs to learn more.
Disc Golf Discs Made From Recycled Post-Industrial Plastic
While the disc making process usually ends with a perfect piece of plastic destined for store shelves – and, later, disc golf baskets – sometimes quality checks reveal small imperfections that make a disc unworthy for general sale. Instead of throwing these imperfect discs into the trash, some manufacturers save them until they have enough to regrind and remold into new products.
This process where companies buy new plastic, make an unsellable product with it, and recycle it into a sellable product is one meaning of "post-industrial recycled plastic." It can also refer to scraps from the manufacturing process saved for reuse. Post-industrial plastic is sometimes called "pre-consumer" plastic because it's recycled before any consumer touches it.
The vast majority of disc golf brands with a line of recycled discs make them with their own post-industrial plastic (i.e., unsellable discs that they regrind) and no post-consumer plastic (i.e., no trash from a landfill, recycling center, etc.). Here's a list of notable disc golf brands' recycled disc lines that fit the bill:
| Disc Golf Brand | Recycled Plastic Line |
| Discraft | Recycled ESP |
| Dynamic Discs |
BioFuzion, BioGold |
| Innova | Echo Star |
| Kastaplast | Regrind |
| Latitude 64 | Recycled |
| MVP | R2 |
| Prodigy | ReBlend |
| Westside Discs | Revive |
While these companies have all produced post-industrial recycled discs at some point, these plastics can sometimes be hard to come by as not all of the companies are actively manufacturing them.
Steve Holloway, the Marketing Manager for MVP told us two other reasons for the seeming scarcity of these discs. First, players are buying these discs up as soon as they are released. Second, it takes a ton of "imperfect" regular production discs to justify a run of the recycled line.
"When you make discs, invariably you end up with some that aren't of the quality standard to be sold, and this means they have to be scrapped," Holloway said. "Our options with that scrap were always to throw it away or try and find a way to recycle it. Years ago, we made the decision to save all of our scrap as we researched how to effectively recycle it and reuse it. It was absolutely the right answer as new technologies have given us the ability to use these items and convert them into usable materials again…Unless we have enough material on hand to run thousands of discs, we just save it up until we are able."
When you buy a disc made with post-industrial recycled plastic and no post-consumer plastic, you're supporting a company that is making an effort to limit the amount of plastic that ends up in a landfill instead of disc golfers' hands. You are not, however, supporting market demand for transforming garbage into viable plastics for manufacturers.
Disc Golf Discs Made with Bioplastics
Bioplastics are made from organic sources (e.g., corn, hemp, seaweed) instead of fossil fuels, and some disc golf companies have created lines of discs with them:
| Disc Golf Brand | Bioplastic Disc Lines | Notes |
| Above Ground Level | Alpine Hemp or Woodland Hemp | Blended with recycled plastic |
| Alfa Discs | Lightweight disc golf starter set | 135-gram discs made of 80% recycled plastic from the Norwegian medical industry (unclear whether post-industrial or post-consumer) and, uniquely, 20% wood. This blend is currently only available in the starter pack and is not used in any individual disc you can buy from Alfa (even though they are the same molds as what's in the starter pack). A company representative told us they hope to sell individual discs in this blend in 2025. |
| Clash Discs | Planty | Made from "plant-derived oil," but it's unclear which plant(s) |
| Gateway Disc Sports | Organic, Organic Hemp, and any other plastic with "hemp" included in the name | The Organic and Organic Hemp lines from Gateway are a blend of bioplastics and recycled rubber. The Organic line incorporates corn-based bioplastic. There is a more extensive lineup of "hemp" discs from Gateway than what's described in its own overview of its plastics and blends. It's likely that these discs are a blend of bioplastic and traditional, new plastic. |
The clearest advantage of bioplastics is that they don't use fossil fuels and come from renewable resources that, when thrown out, are not as damaging to ecosystems as oil-based plastic products.
Still, though new bioplastic is generally considered more eco-friendly than new oil-based plastic, it's not without drawbacks. A statement in a review of bioplastic studies published in 2022 gives examples of some of them: "A complete switch of the 170 million tonnes of global packaging plastics produced per year to bioplastics has been estimated to require 54% of the current corn production and 60% more than Europe's annual freshwater withdrawal." Strain on the world's food supplies, increased water consumption, and deforestation to make way for agriculture are all things very high demand for bioplastics could lead to.
So, are new bioplastic discs better for the world than new traditional plastic ones? Almost certainly. Are they a perfect, completely guilt-free alternative for the environmentally-conscious disc golfer? Probably not.
Disc Golf Discs Made From Recycled Rubber
One of the few current alternatives to plastic in the disc golf disc industry is rubber, the majority of which is synthetic and, like plastic, made with fossil fuels. While Vibram's (now-over) go at the disc golf market produced the most well-known rubber discs, the company never used recycled rubber in its products. But there are two notable and still-operating disc golf manufacturers who are:
- Gateway Disc Sports: This company has two lines of its many plastic and blend options that combine recycled rubber with bioplastic. These are its Organic (recycled rubber + corn-based bioplastic) and Organic Hemp (recycled rubber + hemp-based bioplastic) series. It's unclear on the company's site whether the rubber is post-industrial or post-consumer.
- Elevation Discs: Creator of the cult-favorite, super squishy Koi putter, this brand has three blends that are made partly of recycled rubber. Its ecoFLEX and ecoSUPERFLEX are both made with 30% post-industrial recycled rubber from medical supply manufacturers. Its ecoFLOP discs utilize 30% post-consumer recycled rubber from tires.
Where To Buy, Sell, & Trade Used Disc Golf Discs
If you'd like to learn about various places marketplaces for pre-owned disc golf gear on the web, check out our post "Used Disc Golf Discs: Where To Buy, Sell, & Trade Them Online." Many local independent disc golf shops also have used sections. You can find a disc golf shop near you with UDisc Stores.
Buying pre-owned and used disc golf discs is perhaps the most sustainable choice you can make. They're already out there in the world, and there's no energy used to regrind and remold them. Another bonus is everyday used discs (i.e., not rare or special discs) are often cheaper than anything you buy new.
If you have used discs that you think are virtually unsellable, the aforementioned recycled disc maker Trash Panda will likely take them to regrind for its own use and offer you discounts on purchases in exchange.
Another Way to Look at Eco-Friendly Discs
The main goal of buying an eco-friendly disc is to limit the amount of plastic that ends up polluting the environment. A few companies are taking recycled trash or other businesses' unwanted plastic and turning it into discs while many more are saving their scraps and mistakes to create sellable products. A few are toying with plastics made from organic, renewable sources rather than fossil fuels.
But no matter what you fill your bag with, choosing the right plastic isn't the only way to be a more eco-friendly player. You can pick up trash as you play, carpool or (if available) take public transport to the course, or just be more environmentally conscious in your everyday life.
Note: This post was originally authored by Dan Evon. It has since been significantly expanded by UDisc staff.
