How Pennsylvania became a dumping ground for discarded artificial turf
Danish company Re-Match secured state incentives to open a recycling plant in 2022. It hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile, thousands of rolls of the fake grass, containing PFAS, are piled up on farms.
Philly Inquirer link: https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/artificial-turf-pfas-rematch-pennsylvania-dumping-ground-20231213.html
A real estate broker had approached him in late 2018, and explained that a Denmark-based recycling company called Re-Match wanted to pay $4,500 a month to store more than 1,000 rolls of used, deteriorating artificial turf on 45 acres that Halkias owns in Grantville, Dauphin County.
Halkias was told that Re-Match intended to one day recycle the old turf. The company didn’t yet have a recycling facility in the United States, but the offer was enticing. “It seemed,” he said, “like a great deal.” The deal soon soured.
Halkias claims that Re-Match stopped paying him after two years, but left hulking rows of turf, stacked 10 feet high, at the edge of a cornfield, near a farmhouse and visible from the road. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) received a complaint about the unsightly stacks, and inspected Halkias’ land.
Artificial turf is yet another poorly-researched product that was invented and developed by - TA DAH! - Monsanto Chemical Company. The very company who made and sold RoundUp, among other poisons. Now Monsanto is out of business and who's going to pay to clean up the environment from these dangerous products?
Enough already!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bayer has nothing to gain and everything to lose by buying what was left of Monsanto.
I feel sorry for all the unsuspecting kids that have to play on those giant doormats instead of grass. All that plastic, with an extra added dose of ground up old tires on top. 
How did so many people in charge apparently lose their damn minds anymore?
Last edited Thu Dec 14, 2023, 08:57 PM - Edit history (1)
While the turf sits on these farms, the PFAS will continue to leech into the ground. Well that's not good, it contaminates drinking water and ruins the soil. This company Re-Match is from Europe, where they have a recycling successful business , however the requirements are different from ours in the US.
It's actually quite complicated but it's spelled out in this article (OP link) in the Philly Inquirer. The original plan was to build a recycling plant in Luzerne County PA. Suddenly every sports facility wanted to unload their old synthetic turf and send it to Luzerne, but the factory was never built. Now Re-Match is building in Rush Township Schuylkill County, but they aren't ready to do any recycling yet. The Pennsylvania DEP got involved and now they're demanding that a large bond must be posted. It's very involved and lots of red-tape happening. Apparently Re-Match hasn't said whether they have a way to remove the toxic chemicals, and that suggests that there's really, actually, no safe way to do it.
Edit to add: Archived NO PAYWALL link: https://archive.ph/qCl1c
Even after the rolls of turf are removed, he still can't. So he's lost a lot of money.
My apologies, I didn't realize that the Inquirer would block people from reading the full story.
