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A school official from Massachusetts asked this question recently. They were given an estimate on the cost for their school to switch back to natural grass. The answer: A landscape architect says about $526,000 Cheaper than most synthetic turf replacements! See 1:39:41 in the recording below  Chapel Hill's Kenan Stadium will return to a natural grass field in 2025. By Mike Kadlick The North Carolina Tar Heels are making a significant change to their playing surface ahead of the 2025 season. In consultation with new head coach Bill Belichick, Chapel Hill's Kenan Stadium will return to a natural grass field in 2025, the UNC athletic department announced in a press release on Monday. They had been playing on a synthetic turf surface since 2020. "With our current turf reaching the end of its lifespan, the timing made sense to return Kenan Stadium to its natural grass roots," Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham said in a statement. "Our staff takes great pride in maintaining a top-tier field that reflects the excellence of UNC Football, and we look forward to cheering on the team as it competes on a world-class natural grass surface next season."  By Guy Oldenkotte Jan 7, 2025 Synthetic turf recycling pioneer Re-Match has announced that it will discontinue its operations at the Herning factory in Denmark. The Danish subsidiary has filed for restructuring with the relevant authorities. According to a statement, “the industry and tender system still does not fully or sufficiently incentivize municipalities and turf providers to recognize the value of circularity and to use the most effective circular solution to handle their used synthetic turf.” This decision to discontinue operations at the Herning facility follows an evaluation of the Company’s financial position, operational challenges, and the broader economic and industrial environment. “I highly regret the closure of our exceptional Danish operations and the difficult parting of ways with many of the highly capable, mission driven colleagues at our Herning site – we were all working towards a shared goal. We will continue to make every effort to achieve this goal, accelerating the sustainability transition of this industry” says Coen Rooijmans, CEO of Re-Match. Read the announcement  Santa Clara County Supervisors are considering an artificial turf ban on county land, with proponents citing potential health concerns and a global plastic pollution problem. But opponents argue the ban would only exacerbate an existing shortage of places for kids to play sports. By Candice Nguyen, Michael Bott, Jeremy Carroll, Michael Horn, Robbie Beasom and Michael Campbell, December 30, 2024 As Santa Clara County supervisors consider a proposed artificial turf ban on county-owned land, parents and activists are pointing to the disposal of a local high school’s old field to highlight emerging concerns that plastic fields can’t be meaningfully recycled and come with a host of potential environmental consequences. When Saratoga High School replaced its old artificial turf field last year, district records show a company called TurfCycle USA issued a chain of custody letter stating, “14 trucks were loaded from Saratoga HS and shipped to the TurfCycle facility” in Pescadero. From there, the document states, the old turf field would be “re-purposed into the local community for general landscaping, batting cages, gym flooring, cross-fit, sport related ground coverings and erosion control.” A group of parents and local activists who had been tracking news reports from across the country about giant rolls of artificial turf found piling up in fields or illegally dumped followed three of those trucks, however, which they say did not go to the Pescadero facility as the TurfCycle document stated. Instead, parents watched and snapped photos as the three trucks left more than 50 large rolls of artificial turf in a San Martin field, about 75 miles away from the TurfCycle facility and in an entirely different county. View the full investigative report from NBC.
 by Noël Fletcher Dec 22, 2024 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is deciding whether to create a national program to strengthen demand for the $2.2 billion natural grass industry since American sod is facing an eroding market from plastic turf and consumer misconceptions. ..... The Fake Grass Threat
Although natural grass is being replaced in homes and public areas by mulch, brick, concrete pavers and some rubberized playgrounds, its main economic threat is from fake grass. “Plastic, artificial turf is the primary competitor and most common alternative to natural grass for athletic fields on school grounds, public parks, and collegiate or professional sports venues,” the government says. It cited a 2020 Synthetic Turf Council Market Report for North America listing a 15% growth rate since 2017 in the current $2.7 billion artificial turf industry, with increasing demand coming from athletic field and landscaping applications. Numerous grass growers and organizations that rely on natural sod backed the federal government’s overture (through the USDA’s proposed rule in 2023) to step in and help create the industry-funded promotion, research, and information program for natural grass sod products. A request for public comments resulted in 173 comments submitted prior to a December 2023 deadline. Read the article in Forbes.  By Evan Drellich
Oct 21, 2024 The A’s are going to play on natural grass in Sacramento, not turf as previously planned, a change preferred by the players and made out of concern for the heat. Starting in 2025 the A’s are going to share a stadium, Sutter Health Park, with its incumbent tenant, the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats. MLB previously planned to install a synthetic surface in no small part because it could have been more durable with two teams calling the field home. But the temperatures from a synthetic surface might still have been intense during warm-up and batting practice. “Since the beginning of this process, we have worked collaboratively with the MLBPA to incorporate feedback from major and minor league players regarding the facilities, amenities, and playing conditions in Sacramento,” a league spokesperson said. “Based on feedback from players, as well as guidance from MLB’s long-time field expert, MLB, the A’s and Sutter Health Park have decided to maintain a natural grass field. Our shared, primary concern is ensuring the best and safest playing surface for the A’s, River Cats, and visiting players. “In light of the players’ clear preference for natural grass, and after weighing with the MLBPA the potential risks and benefits of maintaining natural grass versus replacing the playing surface with synthetic turf, all the parties are aligned in moving forward with a natural grass field for Opening Day 2025.” Read the full New York Times article  By David Abel Boston Globe Staff, Updated July 18, 2024
PORTSMOUTH — Two years ago, as local officials debated whether to replace the city’s high school athletic fields with new artificial turf, Superintendent Zach McLaughlin promised the school board that tens of thousands of square feet of the old turf would be recycled. Local environmental advocates urged the city to plant grass instead, noting that artificial turf is not only filled with toxic chemicals and requires large amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture, but that it’s difficult to recycle. They also noted that there’s little evidence that such large fields are ever fully recycled, despite industry claims. The school district decided to proceed with installing new turf and paid a Massachusetts company more than a half million dollars to oversee the work, including recycling. Nearly a year after the Canton-based Atlantic Sports Group removed the old turf, environmental advocates did something that appears to be unprecedented and confirmed long-held fears about the industry’s turf-recycling claims: They managed to track down the old turf and discovered that it had been abandoned in an otherwise empty, dimly lit warehouse in New Jersey. They also found it listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Read the full article  Law.Com
July 05, 2024 by Colleen Murphy A New Jersey federal magistrate judge has preliminarily approved a class action settlement in multidistrict litigation over allegedly defective synthetic field turf which included plaintiffs in the Garden State, California, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania. Read the article  Photo credit: Whole Hog Sports EXAMPLE: Arkansas Razorbacks The Razorbacks switched back to grass in 2019 after 10 years playing on synthetic. Two things to note -
July 21, 2019 by Matt Jones - Whole Hog Sports FAYETTEVILLE — Natural grass will return to the field at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium within a few weeks. The University of Arkansas football team will play home games on a natural surface this fall for the first time since 2008 — the team’s first season under then-head coach Bobby Petrino, who had artificial turf installed in 2009 at a cost of $1.1 million. *Petrino said the synthetic surface was needed to withstand the wear and tear of his practices. Petrino preferred to have most of his practices inside the stadium, and the grass field showed some signs of overuse by the end of 2008. Ten years after Petrino lobbied for a new field in his first season, another new Arkansas head coach, Chad Morris, said he preferred natural grass, citing his experience coaching Texas high school teams. The change could not be made in time for Morris’ inaugural season because construction to the stadium’s north side wasn’t completed until August. With a crane sitting inside the stadium, the turf was peeled back roughly 40 yards most of last year, then laid back down shortly before the 2018 season opener against Eastern Illinois. Arkansas began tearing out the turf field in April and expects to have real grass in the stadium by early August. The estimated cost to switch the field back to grass is $963,000. Read the full article You only have to go back to grass once. This costs not much more than a synthetic field replacement and less than a new synthetic field, which unlike grass needs repeated costly removal, disposal and replacement every 8-10 years on average. Summary and notes by Safe Healthy Playing Fields, Inc.  Credit: KUOW Photo/Megan Farmer by Stephen Howie February 08, 2024 Longtime University of Washington goalies coach Amy Griffin is not an activist by nature. But 15 years ago, she identified what she believed was a trend that she couldn’t ignore in good conscience — young goalies being diagnosed with blood cancer. It started when she ran into two of her former goalkeepers at University Village, an outdoor mall in northeast Seattle. The two young women had grown up playing soccer in the same Seattle neighborhoods, on the same fields. When Griffin saw them at University Village, they had another thing in common: Both were bald from undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma.
After working with goalkeepers for decades (and playing in goal for the U.S. Women’s National Team), Griffin recognizes certain personality traits particular to goalies. Being a goaltender, especially at a high level, requires relentless optimism in the face of inevitable heartache: You can make spectacular saves, but it’s the one mistake people remember. That day at University Village, Griffin saw that goalie attitude — unrelenting optimism and a sense of common fate — in her two former players. They saw their diagnoses as an ironic twist that was related somehow to their role on the field. Typical goalkeepers, they said, shaking their heads and smiling. But also, “Why us?” “One of them said, ‘I wonder if it's the stuff in the field,” Griffin recalled. “I wonder if it’s those little black dots, because we're eating them, we get them in our eyes, we get them in our abrasions.” Those little black dots are the crumb rubber used as infill on more than 13,000 playing and practice fields across the U.S. Each of those fields uses 20,000 to 40,000 shredded waste tires to provide cushioning and traction. While waste tires are heavily regulated because they contain known carcinogens and heavy metals, when those same tires are chopped up and put on playing fields, they are unregulated. Read the report |
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