The short answer is Yes, Artificial turf is recyclable, however there is currently no recycling facility for it within the city of Vancouver. As much as we would love to be recycling all the cutoff pieces, the city has made no attempt to address this issue in the rapidly-growing industry. In the U.S., Big players in the manufacturing industry are pooling resources together to combat this issue, which will hopefully spread to Canada within the next couple of years. Larger scale projects like turf soccer fields are beginning to be recycled: (read link here)
Artificial grass is typically composed of the following materials: Nylon, Polyethylene and Polypropylene. These materials are easier to separate and repurpose into consumer goods, however the thousands of pounds of infill that gets placed into a typical install make it difficult to recycle used turf at the end of its lifespan. Whenever possible, Turf Team re-uses scrap pieces or offers them to homeowners at a ~50% off discount.
While artificial grass actually has many positive environmental benefits, the industry as a whole needs to rally together to make turf recycling more affordable and widely available so that we can continue creating landscape art without adding to the landfills. If you are reading this and have any ideas, solutions or contacts that can help us move the needle on this issue, please reach out to us via email at info@turfteamlandscaping.com
