Desert Mountain lies within a region that is high-risk to changing temperature, water shortages and resource availability. As a top-ranked private golf club in Scottsdale, Arizona, and home to some of the best golf courses in Arizona and the Southwest, Desert Mountain has a clear challenge in being a good steward of our natural resources while still preserving its unique lifestyle for its Members.
To help, Desert Mountain enlisted Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation to create a plan that would prepare Desert Mountain for a better future of sustainability. In the report, ASU saw seven areas of opportunities in which Desert Mountain can apply to its sustainability profile – management, air quality and climate change, energy, recycling and materials, water resources, employees, and resiliency and preparedness. The report also required Desert Mountain to conduct a greenhouse gas emissions inventory which covered categories such as energy consumption, fuel consumption and waste generated.
The results provided Desert Mountain with numerous ideas on how to implement the strategies from ASU’s findings. For golf, Desert Mountain has already played an active role in water conservation through its diverse combination of water savings initiatives. This includes participating in the Recycled Water Distribution System through the City of Scottsdale, utilizing a central single head irrigation system to accurately pinpoint specific areas needing water, and using Evapo-Transpiration, or “ET” equipment, to measure how much moisture evaporates naturally from the turf in a given day, reducing the risk of over-watering.
Newer projects have complemented the ongoing initiatives and raised the efforts to maintain Desert Mountain as a top private golf club in Scottsdale, and a leader in sustainability.
Receiving, Laundry & Recycling Facility
A project that was already in progress during ASU’s study was the Club’s Receiving, Laundry & Recycling Facility. This 8,500 square-foot building opened in 2022 and provides streamlined delivery services, storage and distribution of food and beverage products. As a result, it allows Desert Mountain to buy food products in bulk, thereby reducing the cost per item. Since the facility opened, the Club has realized savings of more than $661,000 for bulk-buying purchases with the expanded capacity and efficiencies from the new facility. So far in 2025 through March, more than $111,000 has been saved.
The facility not only provides a dedicated laundry building versus the outdated and undersized laundry facility that previously existed, but it also reduces the Club’s carbon footprint in major ways. The high-tech laundry machines being used monitor the water and energy usage in real-time. The washer’s fast spin cycle reduces dry time, and can also rinse as they tumble, resulting in 38% less water usage. In total, compared to the previous machines used at the facility, over 258,000 gallons have been saved through more efficient machines. And with less water to remove, the dryers don’t need to work as hard, either. This greater efficiency has also resulted in a 30% decrease in electricity usage from the dryers alone.In a community the size of Desert Mountain, we are cognizant of the amount of waste generated throughout our clubhouses, golf courses and events. In 2024, our Waste Management tonnage report shows we compacted 26.4 tons of mixed recycling, that’s over 50,000 pounds of material that we were able to divert from landfills. This puts much less strain on the environment, and allows for more material to be recycled and reused for greater purposes.
Recycling at The Spa
In the summer of 2024, The Spa at Sonoran Clubhouse partnered with a company called Green Circle Salons to become a Certified Sustainable and Carbon Neutral Salon.
Through this partnership, places like The Spa ship their beauty waste to Green Circle Salons, which then sorts the materials and sends them to one of their own partner’s facilities to be recycled. For example, items like hair clippings could be composted with other organic waste or possibly used in research to develop new environmental technology like insulation and stormwater filtration.
Since beginning the program, The Spa has recycled everything from hair, metals, paper, hair color, plastic and single use items. In 2024 alone, the team recycled 79 pounds of waste, and overall, the team has recycled and kept over 100 pounds out of landfills and waterways. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this is comparable to carbon dioxide emissions from 260 gallons of gasoline.
The Spa also partners with Eminence, a leading organic skin care company, which plants a tree for every retail product purchased as part of their Forest for the Future initiative. Together with Eminence, The Spa has helped plant 1,896 trees to date, notably in various farms across Africa.
Tennis Ball Recycling
The Racquet Sports team at Sonoran is also part of the larger sustainability initiative through their tennis ball recycling program with Recycle Balls, a tennis player-driven recycling organization based in South Burlington, Vermont. According to Recycle Balls, approximately 125 million used tennis balls wind up in landfills across the country every year. Because of the rubber material they’re made from, it can take 400 years for tennis balls to decompose.
The Racquet Sports team is helping the cause by placing green recycling bins courtside where the balls can be conveniently tossed. The bin is then shipped to Recycle Balls’ facility, which then uses the recycled balls in the construction of new tennis courts, horse arena footings, stucco replacements and “No Trash” dog balls. Since the program started at Sonoran in the summer of 2020, roughly 6,000 tennis balls a year have been recycled.
SolarOne project that Desert Mountain will be implementing in 2025 is the installation of solar panels across the Mountain. The bifacial, monocrystalline panels will be installed on rooftops of various Club buildings, with the maintenance building at Apache Golf Course being the first.
The Club is working with APS to design the system that is forecasted to generate approximately 110 kilowatts of energy, enough to power three average 1,800 square-foot homes in Arizona. The team at Apache will be able to monitor the system on or offsite through a built-in app. Most importantly, the cost savings are expected to be more than $25,000 annually.
When you become a Member of Desert Mountain, you are not only a part of a nationally recognized private golf club in Scottsdale, but you also belong to a Club with the purpose of protecting the natural wonders of our landscape. Whether it be hiking through our 25 miles of private hiking trails, dining at one of our 10 restaurants, or playing on seven of the best golf courses in Arizona, you can be assured we strive to safeguard our natural resources while still delivering a world-class lifestyle for our Members.
