Save the Earth, If Not Strokes, With Sun Mountain's Best Stand Bag Yet

Gary Van Sickle hoofed it recently with a four-pound bag full of smart features and made from recycled plastic bottles.

I didn’t just play golf the other day. I helped save the planet.

You’re welcome, fellow Earthlings.

I made a supreme sacrifice—well, a sacrifice—and walked nine holes instead of riding in a gas cart. Fossil fuels. Dead dinosaurs. Carbon dioxide. John Kerry knows what I’m talking about.

Plus, I carried the new Sun Mountain Eco-Lite stand bag ($249.99 and can be purchased here). Pardon my trash talk but do you know what you can do with 20 plastic drinking bottles? Turn them into a golf bag. Sun Mountain is doing it with the help of Repreve, a trademarked polyester yarn made from recycled items like plastic bottles. It’s stamped right there on the flap of the rangefinder pouch flap: “Made with 20 x (bottle diagram).”

Sun Mountain's Eco-Lite stand bag in green.

Courtesy Sun Mountain

This sounds like George Jetson or Elon Musk-Age stuff. An environmentally friendly golf bag? What will they think of next? Whatever it is, somebody is probably already working on it in a sterile lab.

Here’s the best part: Sun Mountain’s Eco-Lite bag, even if it wasn’t environmentally conscious to the max, is a top-of-the-line carry bag. Golf has biodegradable golf balls, which sound nice, but they can’t compete with regular balls when it comes to performance. No serious golfer is going to give up an inch of distance even if it means saving Planet Earth from its overpopulated, polluting self. But a quality golf bag is start.

I’d give the Eco-Lite an A-plus grade even if I didn’t know its recycling background. What’s not to like?

The bag is light (barely four pounds) and easy to carry.

The shoulder harness is well-designed (officially known as the E-Z Lite Dual Strap System) and easier-than-most to slip on and off.

The ball pocket is roomy, easy to unzip and the zipper seems industrial-strength sturdy. What’s the first thing that usually breaks on a golf bag? Yeah, a zipper.

A rangefinder pouch, located just above the ball pocket, is magnetic and has a like handle that provides easy access. I initially dumped my tees and divot-fixers in there before I read a press release and realized, oh, it’s a clever rangefinder pouch. No wonder it has the easy-off lid. Now I have to rearrange my golfing furniture.

A Velcro gloveholder was so cleverly designed that I didn’t even notice it until the end of my first round with Eco-Lite. It is a black triangle of grippy material with a drawing of a hand in the middle. So when you take off your glove to putt (I like putting with my glove on, mainly because I’m too lazy to take it off), you can hang that glove on the Velcro triangle. And it stays there.

There’s a drink bottle holder on one side of the bag, a must-have item for any carry bag.

A zippered, velour-lined pocket on one side near of the bag is a valuables pouch but if you don’t have valuables, you can use it for pencils, ball markers, bandages, tourniquets—the kind of things a golfer inevitably needs.

The big pouch on the bag’s side is big enough to hold my rain suit, no problem.

A lower zippered pocket on the other side is where I store my extra golf gloves.

The legs on this stand-bag kick out promptly and seem well-made. Only time will tell if those are are A-plus or not. Every golfer with a stand bag has fought with bag-stand legs that don’t flip out easily after a number of rounds. Or, worse, the legs droop and get caught in your pant legs when you walk. (Of course, you have to be wearing pants for that to happen.)

The bag’s four-way top is 8.5 inches across and divides clubs into four sections. That number is just the right amount, according to me. Everybody has their own feeling on that but I dislike a bag with 14 compartments for 14 clubs because it’s always a fight to get them in and out, they catch on the dividers and start pulling up the material and … well, that’s just my opinion. It’s O.K. if you don’t agree. That just means you’re wrong.

The Eco-Lite comes in six colors but to show off my environmental awareness, I opted for the striking lime green/dark green combo. If you’re going to go green, go green, right?

The bag is a winner. The idea to recycle is a winner, too. The company responsible for this is Unifi, Inc., founded in 1971. It developed innovative synthetic performance fibers in 1971 that are used in a variety of products and fabric in apparel, car interiors, home furnishings and other consumer products. Repreve has turned more than 35 billion plastic bottles into recycled fiber, according to Bev Sylvester, Unifi Manufacturing Inc.’s vice president of marketing and communications.

Thirty-five billion? McDonald’s sells an estimated 6.48 million burgers a day, an astounding number, but it’s a long run from there to 35 billion. (Do the math and get back to me. I know how you love math problems.)

Unifi collects plastic waste globally, sorts and cleans it at its plant in Reidsville, N.C., and then sends it to nearby Yadkinville, N.C., where the waste is transformed into polyester fiber that can then be used to make golf bags and all the rest. The Eco-Lite stand bag made its debut in 2019, followed by a cart bag the next year. But this 2024 version is the new-and-improved best-one-yet model. (The cart bag is $279.99 and can be purchased here.)

So I am now an Eco-Lite warrior on a mission: Saving the world one golf round at a time.

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