Tyre waste on artificial grass pitches: Recycling Netwerk reports 'polder crime'

“That is not good recycling, but a violation of waste legislation. That is why we are taking this to the Public Prosecution Service,” explains Robbert van Duin, chairman of Recycling Netwerk. The so-called ‘rubber granulate’ that was scattered on thousands of sports fields in the Netherlands is actually shredded car tyres just a few millimetres in size. Every car tyre contains about 1% zinc, and for lorry tyres […]

Rob Buurman

21 Sept 2017

“That is not proper recycling, but a violation of waste legislation. That is why we are taking this to the Public Prosecution Service,” explains Robbert van Duin, chairman of Recycling Netwerk.

The so-called ‘rubber granules’ that were spread on thousands of sports pitches in the Netherlands are actually car tyre shreds of just a few millimetres in size. Every car tyre contains around 1% zinc, and truck tyres even contain 2%.

“The total leaching on all those artificial turf pitches in the Netherlands is more than 10,000 kilos of zinc per year. When a drainage system is installed, part of the zinc remains in the upper lava layer. However, most of the zinc disappears into the soil, groundwater and surface water. In addition, the rubber crumbs also pose risks to the environment and health, because they are blown into verges and ditches, for example, and due to other environmentally harmful substances released from the rubber,” explains Robbert van Duin.

Responsibility

According to Recycling Netwerk, a number of companies are primarily responsible for these environmental violations: the companies that chose this type of waste processing and the companies carrying out the work. They are violating waste legislation and failing to meet their statutory duty of care.

“In addition, we are suing the site owners and managers for failing to construct and manage the artificial turf pitches properly. And the municipalities and agencies responsible for monitoring and enforcement,” says the chairman of Recycling Netwerk, a coalition of environmental organisations in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Legislation

The large emission of zinc would be prohibited under the Soil Quality Decree (Besluit Bodemkwaliteit), but that legislation only applies to stony materials. “Rubber crumbs are, of course, not stony. But the environmental damage is no less real because of that,” Robbert van Duin emphasizes.

Incidentally, the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) was already pointed out in 2006 by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) that zinc concentrations in surface water and groundwater exceed environmental quality criteria.

Despite this, the Ministry of VROM did not intervene and, after consensus-seeking consultations with the tyre industry, limited itself to pointing out everyone's duty of care. Subsequently, several thousand artificial turf pitches were constructed using rubber crumbs on and under those pitches. All kinds of car tyres were used, on all kinds of soil and with all kinds of drainage systems, without proper monitoring of construction and management.

“There was a lot of back-and-forth consensus-seeking between the government and the tyre industry about this. The waste regulations were handily kept out of sight. The result is now that large quantities of zinc and other harmful substances end up in the soil and water. We call this 'polder crime',” says van Duin.

Environmental consequences of car tyre waste on artificial turf pitches

Processing old car tyres into rubber granules for sports pitches is a textbook example of bad recycling. It yields no environmental benefits, but rather due to the shredding, all kinds of harmful substances end up in the environment more quickly. Because there is more than just zinc leaching. Those rubber crumbs also spread to the surrounding environment: microparticles and nanoparticles are carried away by, for example, the wind or on shoes and clothing.

Every year, the rubber crumbs have to be replenished. For the Netherlands as a whole, more than 500,000 kilos of car tyre waste are dumped on sports pitches annually for this purpose alone. That is dozens of full lorry loads per year. Those rubber crumbs lead to ecological damage around the pitches and end up in animal feed. Part of it eventually washes out to sea, and thus contributes to the plastic soup.

“As an environmental movement, we want environmental gains, and not as much recycling as possible at any cost. That is why we are committed to good recycling, and against bad recycling. The tyre industry is happy that it can dump shredded old tyres on sports pitches, and even get paid for it too. But the risks of zinc leaching to the environment are significant. Those rubber granules on sports pitches are simply still waste. That is why authorities must also treat them as waste,” concludes Robbert van Duin.

Background

Previously, Professor Jan Tytgat, head of the toxicology department at KU Leuven (Belgium), advised municipalities to “avoid rubber granules and choose the safe alternative”. The Amsterdam football club Ajax has already decided to remove the rubber granules from its artificial turf pitches. The city of Sint-Truiden and the municipality of Houthalen-Helchteren in Belgian Limburg banned football on the artificial turf pitches, and in the meantime, it has been decided for nearly 80% of the artificial turf pitches in Belgian Limburg to make them ‘rubber-free’ as quickly as possible.