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.
“Our industry takes seriously our commitment to sustainable practices,” said Melanie Taylor, president of the Synthetic Turf Council, an industry trade group. “The industry always encourages owners of synthetic turf to recycle, reuse, or repurpose the system components whenever possible.”
Kyla Bennett, science policy director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington-based environmental advocacy group that has long criticized the use of artificial turf, scoffed at Taylor’s claims. She said there are no facilities in the United States that can recycle old turf fields into new ones and added that much of what the industry considers recycling comes from burning old turf, which she described as “awful for the environment.”
