Turf recycler hit with environmental violations as it works to open PA plant

In 2021, then-Gov. Tom Wolf announced that a Danish artificial turf recycler would be opening its first U.S. processing center in Pennsylvania, providing a new destination for ever-accumulating piles of discarded sports fields. 

The company, Re-Match, would receive Pennsylvania loans and grants totaling $1.85 million to open its recycling facility, which is expected to create around 40 new jobs in the commonwealth, officials said. 

More than a year later, the processing center hasn’t opened. In fact, an official in Rush Township, Schuylkill County, where the future plant is expected to operate, said the company hasn’t yet gotten the municipal approvals needed for the project.

Meanwhile, the artificial turf they one day hope to recycle has been waiting around, stacked in sagging piles in Pennsylvania fields and parking lots. And the very same company that is in line to capture nearly $2 million in state incentives is also getting notices that it’s violating the commonwealth’s environmental laws. 

More:'Running out of room': How old turf fields raise potential environmental, health concerns

Over the last few years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has identified infractions at three separate sites where Re-Match was storing the turf. DEP officials haven't yet imposed any fines on Re-Match for the violations and are working with the company on a plan to relocate the material to the location of its future processing center, an agency representative said.

Re-Match representatives acknowledged there have been delays in opening the Pennsylvania recycling facility, as they've been focusing first on launching another location in Holland. It would have been far cheaper and easier for them to discard the fields rather than storing them for years — but they say they couldn't do that.

"We don't want it to be landfilled or burned," Re-Match CEO and co-founder Nikolaj Magne Larsen said. "One of the worst things I can do, from a board perspective/owner's perspective, is to throw my materials away, even though it costs me more to store them."

Still, advocates who have raised concerns about the health and environmental impacts of artificial turf say, at a minimum, regulators should require Re-Match to follow the law and impose financial consequences if the company fails. 

But they also say the violations highlight the challenge of dealing with synthetic fields at the end of their lifespan. Many landfills won’t accept the massive and unwieldy turf rolls, and dumping the material outside is problematic because it can contain harmful chemicals, advocates say. To this point, no companies in the U.S. can fully recycle them, according to a turf trade association president.

Unfortunately, turf field disposal is often a matter of out-of-sight, out-of-mind, advocates say. 

“It's being shipped overseas. It's being dumped in fields in Pennsylvania and wetlands in Maryland and Massachusetts,” said Kyla Bennett, science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “I do not know anyone who's [disposing of fields] properly, because it cannot be done properly.”

Re-Match contends it has found a solution, with its patented process for recycling the fields. 

With its Pennsylvania processing center, “we will be able to offer sustainable recycling to an area with a high concentration of artificial turf fields,” Magne Larsen said in a press release when announcing the location in 2021. 

But Bennett isn’t convinced Re-Match is the answer, either. 

What were Re-Match’s environmental violations?

At multiple locations, DEP officials have found Re-Match in violation of laws against dumping solid waste without the proper permitting, agency records show. 

Inspectors sent owners of one Lebanon County property a notice in 2021, warning that they weren’t allowed to keep turf rolls stacked outside on the property and directing them to develop a plan for correcting the violations. But the following year, DEP officials found that Re-Match’s synthetic fields were still piled around the site.

They flagged similar violations at a Lebanon County concrete business where Re-Match was keeping turf rolls and at the Schuylkill County industrial park where the company plans to open its recycling center. 

Re-Match last year started transporting 7,000 tons of material from the Lebanon County sites to the Schuylkill County location, according to the DEP records. Since 2022, at the permanent site, the company has moved all of the synthetic fields inside, a state official said.

Magne Larsen said since discovering Re-Match was improperly storing the turf, the company has been working with DEP to correct the situation.

The recycler has applied to the state for a waste management permit that will allow it to accept and repurpose the turf, but that approval is still pending. 

The company also needs local officials to sign off on its building use plans before it can transport remaining turf rolls from Lebanon County to its facility site, according to DEP. 

But Bennett said keeping the turf fields outside is unacceptable because of the substances they contain, including manmade compounds called PFAS, often known as “forever chemicals.” PFAS, which are found in many consumer products, linger for long periods of time in soil and drinking water, and research has found the chemicals might cause fertility issues, childhood developmental delays and increased cancer risk. 

The AstroTurf used in the Philadelphia Phillies stadium in the late '70s and early '80s contained more than a dozen different PFAS, according to lab testing requested by the Philadelphia Inquirer. The newspaper decided to investigate the turf’s chemical makeup after six former Phillies players died from the same rare form of brain cancer. 

Leaving the used fields outdoors could cause some of these chemicals to leach into the environmental, said Bennett.

More:York County creek samples show highest levels of 'forever chemicals' in the country

She believes DEP should make sure all Re-Match’s rolls are enclosed indoors and fine the company. 

The Synthetic Turf Council, an industry association, has responded to health and environmental concerns by saying the PFAS and rubber used in fields are of low risk. They point to research suggesting that athletes have a relatively low exposure to cancer-causing chemicals in the synthetic fields.

“The materials used in synthetic turf have been thoroughly reviewed by both federal and state government agencies and are considered to be non-hazardous,” Melanie Taylor, the Synthetic Turf Council’s president and CEO, wrote in an email.

The turf council also contends that synthetic fields are more environmentally friendly than natural grass ones, since their upkeep doesn’t require large amounts of water or harmful pesticides and fertilizer. 

How do you dispose of old fields?

But the question remains: What should happen after synthetic fields reach the end of their lifespan? 

The Synthetic Turf Council estimates that between 12,000 and 15,000 fields are in use in the U.S. and that up to 1,500 new ones are installed each year. Field warranties are typically about eight years long, but the turf can last longer depending on maintenance and how intensely they’re used, the council says.

Industry representatives emphasize that there are reuse options for worn-out turf, saying it can cover driving ranges, band practice fields, pet parks and batting cages. Advocates, on the other hand, counter that there aren’t enough facilities like these in existence to repurpose all the nation’s artificial athletic fields. 

Against that backdrop, Re-Match has offered the possibility of recycling the material rather than dumping it into landfills or incineration. Already, Re-Match has recycled the equivalent of 500 million plastic bags, the company CEO said.

But this reuse option has been relatively inaccessible in the U.S., since it would mean shipping the fields to the company’s processing plant in Denmark.

In a video last year, the company’s CEO said they’re setting the stage for a global expansion, aiming to open 24 new factories in Europe and the U.S. by 2030. 

For Bennett, recycling still doesn't cure the problem of field disposal, since creating new products containing PFAS raises its own set of problems.

Diana Conway, president of the nonprofit Safe Healthy Playing Fields, is also skeptical that companies have come up with an environmentally friendly way of using the aged-out fields.

“I'd be happy to be proven wrong,” she said. “It's kind of the way I feel about a lot of toxic products: It would be great if it turned out this is a multivitamin for the Earth, but I don’t have a lot of faith.” 

Re-Match executives note that they're simply finding a sustainable way of handling materials that have already been created. The company tests each turf field that it recycles to make sure its end products are pure and aren't tainted with harmful substances, Magne Larsen said.

"We don't produce the turf," he said. "We recycle, and we clean up after the industry."

How are recycled fields being used?

Additionally, both Bennett and Conway have questions about how Re-Match’s business model works.

Processing the unwieldy fields is a challenging and presumably expensive undertaking, Bennett said. Synthetic turf can contain sand and granulated crumb rubber, in addition to the plastic grass blades, and each of these components must be separated out before the recycling begins. 

The DEP violation notice mentions that Re-Match’s recycled materials could end up in rubber mats, rubber parking bumpers, “extruded plastic pellets,” cement and grout. 

However, Conway said her group has asked Re-Match and similar companies where its recycled items are marketed, what the trade names are and who’s buying them and haven’t received any clear answers. 

The company acknowledges that the majority of its revenue still comes from the fees it charges to accept the old fields but hopes that, in the long run, it will make most of its money from selling recycled products. Right now, the recycled raw materials are "primarily sold to maintain soccer pitches," Re-Match's most recent annual report states.

Magne Larsen said the company is currently selling recycled materials faster than they can produce them. They expect their sales earnings will continue to climb as they find buyers who are willing to pay more.

The timeline for opening the Pennsylvania center depends on when the company secures its permits and other approvals, he added. But the Re-Match CEO said the company was able to open its Holland facility within a year of ordering the recycling machines.

Re-Match has not yet applied for its state loan, and Pennsylvania will not award grant money until the company has met all environmental compliance requirements, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

As a condition of receiving the state incentives, the company has committed to investing $15 million in its recycling center project, creating at least 37 new jobs and operating at the site for at least eight years. 

In the meantime, a farmer in Nicholson and property owner in Lebanon County have both sued Re-Match for unpaid rent. The farmer says the company owes at least $288,000, while the courts awarded the other property owner $3,500 in back rent in late 2021. 

Re-Match denies the existence of a signed contract with the Nicholson farmer, and that case is still pending.

Kevin Fox, a property owner in Cleona, said Re-Match was paying him rent for storing turf on his land several years ago — but the mayor and other community members began complaining that it was serving as a mosquito breeding ground and that animals were living in it. The company has since relocated the fields to its permanent site in Schuylkill County.

“I’m just glad the stuff’s off my property,” Fox said. “And that they’re actually going to do something decent with it.”

Bethany Rodgers is a government accountability reporter for the USA TODAY Network and can be reached at brodgers@gannett.com.