West Austin Teen Works To Lessen Golf Course

By Forrest Preece

Second-generation West

McWilliams

Austinite Max grew up playing golf on Lions Municipal Golf Course and is on the Westlake High golf team, which is ranked number one in Texas and number two in the country. While traveling to tournaments statewide, he became disheartened to see golf courses overflowing with empty plastic water bottles, which can take up to 1,000 years to decompose.

He pitched his ideas about how to solve this problem to the Green Sports Alliance, a worldwide organization which works with professional sports teams to promote sustainability. Soon he was selected as their first High School Ambassador, and he began work to devise a sustainable program for the Westlake team.

“One of my green initiatives for the team was to convert the use of plastic water bottles to other options like aluminum containers,” McWilliams says. He also helped start a recycling program to donate used golf equipment to the First Tee nonprofit group and he began an initiative to recycle old scorecards.

Then he decided to try making a change statewide. When the Texas legislative session opened in January, he set out to help enact a law to ban the sale of single-use plastic water bottles at municipal golf courses. He reached out to Representative Donna Howard and Senator Nathan Johnson who agreed to file bills with wording he drafted. If this legislation passes, the golf courses could still sell other types of drinks in plastic bottles, but not water, since it is readily available for free and can be poured into reusable aluminum containers.

On Tuesday, April 11, HB 1174 had a hearing before in the Texas House Urban Affairs Committee. With Rep. Howard looking on, McWilliams testified on its behalf. Its companion bill, SB 551 by Senator Nathan Johnson, is also slated for a hearing later this month.

He is hopeful that this initiative will inspire similar measures in other states around the country. “Given the importance of golf courses to green space, I think it is crucial to take measures to lessen their impact on the environment,” McWilliams says.