Artificial turf for sports has been in the spotlight since the European Commission adopted Regulation (EU) 2023/20255 in 2023, which prohibits the placing on the market of microplastics.
Indeed, one of the main sources of microplastics released into the environment is artificial turf sports pitches; consequently, companies specialising in their design and installation have been forced to research and develop new materials to comply with the new regulations and implement the circular economy in this sector.
Recycled material for turf
One example is the German company Polytan, one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of sports surfaces, which has focused its research on the use of recycled material as a raw material for the manufacture of artificial turf.
Since late 2023, the German company has developed a whole range of products made from used plastics, mostly sourced from single-use packaging.
These products include surfaces such as Liga Turf Cross R, LigaTurf Trion R, LigaTurf RS+R, LigaGrass Synergu R and LigaGrass Pro R.
Under the slogan “We make Plastic Better”, the German manufacturer processes plastic that has been in use for just a few hours in the packaging of perishable food products and transforms it into turf fibres for sports pitches. These surfaces have an average lifespan of around 15 years.
This is an initiative that the German company calls Polytan Green, and its aim is to gradually replace fossil-based artificial turf with sustainable, recycled synthetic systems.
In the words of Michael Pajak, product manager at Polytan, “we are currently witnessing a shift in mindset. Demand for environmentally friendly product solutions is rising in response to climate change, which is becoming increasingly evident everywhere. Added to this is the ban on microplastics in infill materials, which not only has a massive impact on our systems but also on global markets. Increasingly, customers, cities and local authorities are once again actively seeking recycled solutions because more and more funding and grants are becoming available”.
Advantages
The advantages offered by the use of these recycled materials are significant:
- Reduction in plastic waste, which is given a new purpose.
- Reduced production of new resins and polymers.
- Lower energy consumption.
- Reduced CO₂ emissions.
The long-term goal is to achieve a circular economy. As Friedemann Söll, Managing Director of Polytan GmbH, points out, this means “moving away from a linear economy, in which products are manufactured, used and discarded. Instead, we want to transition to a circular economy, in which plastic products are designed to retain their value throughout their entire lifespan”.
The German company uses high-quality, single-source plastic waste from the transport and packaging industries. These recycled granules make up approximately 20 per cent of the filaments in the artificial turf systems manufactured by Polytan, which offer the same high performance as the rest of its products, proving that football can be sustainable, even at the highest level.
LIFE T4C Project
Indeed, Polytan is one of the companies involved in the LIFE T4C project, which aims to create a comprehensive artificial sports turf system that is sustainable and constitutes a viable alternative to sports pitches containing microplastics.
This consortium also includes the Murcia-based company Green World Compounding, which likewise uses recycled materials in the manufacture of its products, specifically in the production of Ecolastene, the sustainable alternative to microplastics used as infill in artificial turf sports surfaces.
In this case, the material consists of agricultural plastics from vegetable gardens in the regions of Murcia and Andalusia, which were previously discarded and constituted polluting waste, but are now cleaned, processed and converted into a new material with the same dynamic properties as the SBR rubber infill used on artificial turf sports pitches.
The use of these recycled materials in the construction of new artificial turf sports pitches – both in the infill and in the fibres that make up the turf – allows tonnes of materials to be put to new use that would otherwise have ended up polluting the environment.