FIFA is taking steps to make football more sustainable, starting with the pitches: the sport’s governing body has recently recycled the artificial turf at its Zurich headquarters and hopes that others will follow suit.

While natural grass pitches are the traditional choice and beloved by the more nostalgic of fans, they can easily become muddy and waterlogged or dusty and bare, depending on the climate, all of which can negatively affect the quality of play.

The cost of maintaining a grass pitch worn down by a combination of honest running, mistimed sliding tackles and bad weather means many clubs now use hybrid pitches, where real grass is reinforced with synthetic fibres; Anfield, Old Trafford and the Emirates Stadium all use a hybrid surface called Desso GrassMaster.

New technological advances mean that artificial turf is also enjoying a resurgence. While the original AstroTurf was banned by FIFA in the 1990s due to it being a much harder surface than grass - many of us still carry both real and metaphorical scars from having to endure the merciless surface in school PE lessons - newer third generation or 3G pitches have a deeper pile and better mimic the qualities of natural grass. FIFA has developed a Quality Programme for Football Turf which sets standards for synthetic surfaces, meaning that in places where climate can prove a real hindrance, artificial turf is often used instead.

Since 2006, there have been 3,473 FIFA-certified artificial turf pitches laid across 149 countries. 3G pitches have synthetic blades of grass, made predominantly from a mix of polyethylene and polypropylene, supported by a base layer of sand, with a rubber crumb or polymer or organic (cork) infill to keep the blades upright. Sometimes a shockpad is also installed beneath the turf to absorb impact and protect players against injury, feigned or otherwise.

According to FIFA, the life cycle of an artificial turf pitch is approximately eight years. At the end of life, the shockpad can remain for the replacement pitch to be laid on top, but the turf must either be landfilled, incinerated or recycled.

Unsurprisingly, research commissioned by FIFA and conducted by Eunomia Research & Consulting found that recycling the turf provides huge environmental benefits in comparison to the other options, especially for turf which contains TPE (thermoplastic elastomer, a rubber-plastic mix). Recycling is not yet widely available, but a Danish company, Re-Match Turf Recycling, is hoping to change this, and claims its process saves approximately 400 tonnes of CO² equivalent emissions versus incineration for every field processed.

Re-Match, which received approval from the FIFA-accredited Sports Labs surface testing company in 2017, collects end-of-life turf and transports the material to its facility in Denmark, where it is shredded and can be used again as infill in new pitches if it is of a high enough quality. The company is able to recycle 99 per cent of the turf materials, with the lower quality output going to various different uses: the rubber to rubber mat production, the sand for grout or sandblasting, and the plastic elements are pelletised into a polyethylene/polypropylene fraction to be used in the production of new plastic products.

“The target for me is that it’s not going to cost you anything to recycle a football field,” said Re-Match’s Chief Executive Officer Dennis Anderson. “We create enough value on the back end of our process so we don’t need to charge any money for you to dispose of your waste.”

Federico Addiechi, FIFA’s Head of Sustainability & Diversity, commented: “As an international organisation, FIFA has a responsibility to protect, cherish and limit our impact on the environment. We seek to lead by example, not only in the field of football but also in sports more widely, by placing sustainability and environmental protection at the heart of everything we do.”

Eunomia’s study concluded that ‘there is very little justification for pitches located in Western Europe not to be recycled’ using the process offered by Re-Match. While access to recycling in other parts of the world is currently more restricted, and disposal of waste in landfill may be less strictly regulated, it is hoped that the future of artificial turf pitches will be green in more ways than one.

The full report into the environmental impact of artificial turf pitches can be read on FIFA’s football technology website.