There I was on the eighth hole, my scorecard looking like a day for Manny Ramirez against the Orioles: double, double, triple. There were some bright spots early on, but I needed to get back on track before the turn. I teed up my ball, facing a short par-4. That’s when I noticed it. The tee box and surrounding waste area were littered with golf tees. There must have been two hundred pieces — some intact, some not, some with pharmaceutical names on the side, some plain. I felt like a giant looking down onto the battlefield at Antietam.

Let me say first: I’m no conservationist. As I’m writing this I’m drinking iced tea from a Styrofoam cup, looking at my oversized pick-up truck in the driveway, a couple of bald eagles and Galapagos tortoises on the barbeque. But I couldn’t help being perturbed by all those tees. And that’s just one hole at one course in one town. Do the math, and the results are astounding.

There are an estimated 17,000 golf courses in the United States. The average golf course records about 30,000 rounds per year. That means approximately 500 million rounds of golf are played annually in the US. Now consider that the average player uses 6.75 tees every round. That’s 3.4 billion tees, the majority of which are made from wood (typically cedar). How can the forests keep up? It takes 40 years for most wood species to fully grow.

We’re using four hundred bazillion tees every year, and according to historians the first generation of golfers didn’t use anything. They didn’t even tee off from a tee box; Old Tom Morris didn’t create a separate tee area at the Old Course at St Andrews until the late 19th century. In those days, golfers didn’t use wood to tee up. They used piles of sand. They took a handful of it, shaped it into an inverted cone and set the feathery on top.

Eventually players began making their own personal tees using cork or paper. Dr. George Grant, one of the first black graduates of Harvard Dental School, was the first American to patent a golf tee, which he did in 1899. It was a peg topped with rubber. The ball didn’t sit steadily on top, as Dr. Grant’s tee was missing a concave head.

Granted, a lot of tiny wood tees can fit into a fully matured cedar. But that hasn’t stopped a growing number of companies from bringing the green scene to the tee box. Bamboomer of Ontario makes tees from bamboo, a plant that grows to full size in less than four years (the company’s slogan: “the responsible golfer’s tee”). Knox, Indiana-based Eco Golf makes tees that aren’t biodegradable. They’re degradable. The tees break down over time; when placed in active compost the process is greatly accelerated. The company, located in Indiana’s corn-centric heartland, has also produced tees made from corn byproduct and held together with plastic. Among its clients are Walt Disney World’s golf properties, Doral Golf Resort and Spa in South Florida, and Pebble Beach Golf Academy. Evolve Golf (highlighted in GLG’s July-August issue) makes a sustainable tee from recycled materials. Since the product’s debut in 2004, it has been a part of 27 PGA Tour wins.

We are a nation of consumers recently faced with a market shift. The things we need are becoming more expensive and, in some cases, scarce. So while we can’t stop it, maybe we can slow it down. Don’t leave your tee in the ground. If you see a tee broken in half, grab the top end for that upcoming par-3. Or try one of the products from Eco Golf, a small business in our backyard.

After leaving the course that day, I imagined a team of archaeologists in 7300 A.D. going on a dig for 21st century relics. They’ll uncover ancient cities: strip malls, fuel stations, Starbucks across the street from Starbucks. They’ll also notice that tiny wooden shards seem to blanket the earth in 7,100-yard increments. Who knows what they’ll learn about us from that.