9 Dec 2020

Revolutionary material from recycled artificial turf for a sustainable future

We proudly share an extensive article about Ecocept in the December edition of the German Stadion Welt Magazine. The magazine is in German, therefore please find an English summary of the article below:

Revolutionary material from recycled artificial turf for a sustainable future

"Where to dispose of the synthetic turf at the end of its life?" This is a question that sports facility operators must deal with intensively nowadays. The TenCate Grass Group provides an innovative solution that gives synthetic turf a second life.

In cooperation with well-known artificial turf manufacturers, GBN AGR (Artificial Grass Recycling), a completely new type of artificial turf recycling facility, was created in the Netherlands. The new recycling plant makes it possible to process old artificial turf into three raw materials (sand, synthetic infill granulates and recycled turf agglomerate (RTA)). These recycled materials can be used as secondary raw materials for a wide range of industrial applications. The RTA is one of the ingredients of our Ecocept performance sports base.

Recycled Turf Agglomerate is extremely suitable for the recipe of Ecocept; an elastic base layer for artificial turf systems. By using Ecocept, up to 10 end-of-life artificial turf pitches can be processed in a new system. Furthermore, up to 190 tons of CO2 emissions can be saved per Ecocept field. This corresponds approximately to a CO2 compensation amount of 112 trees or the CO2 emission of a car of average size in 22 years. At the end of its long life, Ecocept can also be regranulated and reprocessed again, to extend the life cycle of the system and to create a sustainable closed loop solution. The Ecocept base layer, containing RTA produced by GBN in the Netherlands, has already been successful installed in Germany. Weitzel Sportstättenbau installed Ecocept with RTA granulate in Oelixdorf. Force reduction, water infiltration and strength have been successfully confirmed in tests.

"Sustainability is the order of the day - also in our industry", says director Weitzel. "With our focus on recyclable materials, we play a pioneering role in Germany." In order to continue its pioneering role in the market, the team of Weitzel is working to expand sports facility construction with high priority on further innovations, to make synthetic turf system fully recyclable, microplastic-free and CO2 neutral in design.