‘Forever Fields’: How Pennsylvania became a dumping ground for discarded artificial turf

Money doesn’t come easily to farmland owners in the tranquil, rolling hills of Pennsylvania. So at first, Jim Halkias thought he’d hit the jackpot.

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.

The agency categorized the old turf as “solid waste” that constituted a “public nuisance,” and further determined that Re-Match had violated state environmental laws by failing to obtain necessary permits for storing the turf.

For years, Halkias has tried to sell his farm. He says three potential buyers lost interest because of the rolls of turf. “No one will accept the property,” he said, “with all this stuff, which is considered to be waste by the DEP.”

There is no government agency that monitors or regulates the disposal of artificial turf, which contains toxic chemicals, including PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment and stay in the human body for years.

Scrap tires, often used to cushion the fake grass, cannot be dumped in landfills, yet no such regulation is on the books for rolls of turf, which, given its weight, can cost more than $20,000 per field to be discarded in landfills.

The Synthetic Turf Council, a national organization that represents manufacturers, builders, and infill material suppliers, has estimated that there are as many as 13,000 artificial turf fields across the U.S. Those fields — which add up to almost 24,000 acres — need to be replaced every eight to 10 years.

Some bundles of used turf have found a second life in online marketplaces, where they’re sold and used to carpet batting cages, dog runs, back yards, miniature golf courses, and paint-ball fields. In other instances, though, stockpiles of old, fake grass have found a less conventional fate: being abandoned in Pennsylvania, where the synthetic carpets decay on empty lots, in warehouses, or near quarries.

Experts and activists who monitor the artificial turf industry say that the state has become a dumping ground for cities and towns in neighboring states that want to get rid of their old turf fields. Consultants and landscape architects have even assured municipal leaders that their aging turf can be recycled in Pennsylvania.

That belief could be traced to Pennsylvania officials having announced, in 2021, that Re-Match would locate its first U.S. facility in a Luzerne County factory.

On paper, the company’s outlook was encouraging. It had an existing recycling facility in Denmark, with plans to operate 24 factories in multiple countries by 2031. And the process that Re-Match used to recycle turf had been given a stamp of approval by an independent body, the European Union’s Environmental Technology Verification program. Re-Match claimed that, by recycling turf — instead of burning it — the Pennsylvania facility would spare the environment from 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Behind the scenes, though, Re-Match disclosed that it might not be able to recycle 100% of the turf it collects, and that its operations could potentially cause environmental contamination, according to a prospectus that was shared with potential investors in 2021.

Now, the clock is ticking.

Re-Match’s plans for Luzerne County never came to fruition; instead, it’s seeking to open a factory in Rush Township, Schuylkill County. And in November, the company agreed to a consent order with Pennsylvania’s DEP, which requires it to remove the rolls of turf from Halkias’ property.

The agency prohibited Re-Match from storing more than 7,000 tons of turf at two other sites — a concrete business in Jonestown, and at its planned Rush Township plant — and required Re-Match to establish a $644,000 bond to keep the “waste” at those locations.

Re-Match agreed to have its recycling facility fully operational by the end of 2024. But its troubles also extended to Wyoming County, where a farmer sued the company in federal court, claiming it owes him nearly $300,000 for about 6,200 rolls of turf that Re-Match has stored on his property since 2018. The case was settled last month. (Parties did not reveal the terms.)

“We are looking forward to start recycling in Pennsylvania,” Re-Match’s chief funding and expansion officer, Nikolaj Magne Larsen, wrote in an email. “The permits required for this project take time, but we continue to make great progress.”

Re-Match’s slow start in Pennsylvania has coincided with mounting international concern about the impact that chemicals in artificial turf might have on human health.

» READ MORE: How we were able to test artificial turf from Veterans Stadium and what the tests showed

Earlier this year, an Inquirer investigation, “Field of Dread,” found that AstroTurf that covered the field at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium in the late 1970s and early 1980s contained 16 different types of PFAS, which are used in the process of manufacturing the fake grass.

These pervasive “forever chemicals” are found in a host of products, including firefighting gear and nonstick cookware, and have been linked by the EPA to cancer, asthma, thyroid disease, and decreased immunity to fight infections. Across the country, PFAS chemicals have contaminated drinking water.

Six former Philadelphia Phillies who spent parts of their careers at the Vet between 1971 and 2003 have died from glioblastoma — about three times the average rate of this aggressive form of brain cancer among adult men in the U.S. (The Phillies have said that several brain cancer experts have told the organization that there is no evidence of a link between artificial turf and the disease.)

» READ MORE: THE BURNING QUESTION: Firefighters’ protective gear may actually be harming them.

Kyla Bennett is a former EPA official and leading expert on PFAS, and now serves as a science policy director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

The turf recycling process, which involves separating sand and crumb rubber infill from the plastic green carpet, doesn’t remove PFAS, which Bennett said renders even the recycled product contaminated.

“So what are you going to use it for? Where would it be safe?” she asked. “It’s filled with toxic chemicals, so you don’t want to recycle that and reuse it. You’re just kicking the can down the road. You want to get rid of it somehow … and no one has figured out a way to do that.”

“They call PFAS chemicals forever chemicals for a reason,” Bennett said.

“These are forever fields.”

Re-Match’s arrival in Pennsylvania, in December 2021, was viewed as a win for both the company and the state, which expected to gain up to 40 full-time jobs once the recycling facility became operational.

Then-Gov. Tom Wolf touted the fact that Re-Match offered a “sustainable solution” to the problem of old turf fields, which, he noted, posed a “significant challenge to the environment.”

In exchange, the state offered financial assistance: a 10-year, $1.85 million loan — at just 2.5% interest — from the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority, and a $148,000 Pennsylvania First grant, for purchasing vital equipment for the recycling plant. (The company has yet to apply for those funds, according to the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development.)

» READ MORE: FIELD OF DREAD: We tested the Vet’s turf and found dangerous chemicals.

A few days after Wolf welcomed Re-Match to the state, the company shared a prospectus with potential investors. It was seeking to sell 10.9 million shares in an initial public offering of stock (IPO), and wrote that it needed to use some of the proceeds of that sale to finance the construction of the Pennsylvania factory, and another in the Netherlands.

It also included extensive warnings about the nature of its business.

“The [company] is not able to recycle 100% of the artificial turf systems,” reads one section of the prospectus.

Re-Match warned that its recycling business “entails certain environmental risks,” and that it could be held liable by governments for land contamination. The price “for investigation and acting, such as removing or restoring land,” the prospectus reads, “could be significant.”

“In an IPO document, the business must state all the risks that the business could encounter, no matter how unlikely,” Larsen said. “We can absolutely recycle all the turf we have in storage.”

In the prospectus, Re-Match further cautioned that its recycling facilities “may not generate the expected clean products,” and that its business could be imperiled if governments begin banning turf outright due to concerns about chemicals in the product.

The latter prediction has already come true.

Last December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation to ban sales in the state of artificial turf that contains PFAS as of Dec. 31, 2024. Earlier this year, California legislators passed a similar turf sales ban, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, citing lack of regulatory oversight. Similar laws have been proposed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

In October, the NFL Players Association brought even more attention to the issue. The union called on manufacturers to disclose whether PFAS are present in artificial turf or infill material that’s used by the NFL, and urged the league to replace turf playing fields at 14 stadiums with natural grass.

Jim Halkias knew little about Re-Match — or the contentious debate over artificial turf — when he agreed to let the company store turf on three or four acres for $4,500 a month.

“It just seemed pretty simple. Like it’s just AstroTurf,” he said. “I was told this stuff’s not really dangerous.”

» READ MORE: Why worries about forever chemicals and injuries might push the NFL to ditch artificial turf

He claims he was assured the company would wrap the turf in plastic bags — so the arrangement would be no different, really, than storing some bales of hay on his property.

“But they used one milliliter plastic bags and the wind would just tear them up,” Halkias said. “So the plastic was just flying down the road because of the wind. And actually I was scared it might cause an accident.”

Halkias said he has spent $20,000 in legal fees in an attempt to get Re-Match to pay him the money he is owed for the lease. He regrets allowing the company to use his land.

“It was a very bad decision,” he said.

He recently settled the case, and Re-Match has begun to remove some rolls from his land, Halkias said. He did not disclose the terms of the settlement.

Halkias’ story echoes one that played out in Wyoming County, where the owner of B.D. Hill Side Farm alleged that Re-Match agreed in June 2018 to pay $96,000 a year to store turf on his property. The company deposited more than 400 tractor trailer loads of turf on the farm — and allegedly stopped making payments in 2019.

“These issues have been resolved,” Larsen said.

Re-Match isn’t the only company saying it can effectively recycle artificial turf.

AstroTurf tells prospective clients that it can transport used fields to a factory in Dalton, Ga., where fake grass is separated from its infill materials, then shredded, melted, and mixed with chemical pods to create “new” material, according to its vendor contracts.

In 2017, the Synthetic Turf Council, an industry group, published a guideline for recycling, reusing, and removing synthetic turf systems.

The council wrote that the “diversity” of materials in fake grass “presents technical, economic and logistical challenges unlike other commonly recycled materials, such as plastic bottles, carpet and plastic bags.”

There is no mention in the AstroTurf contract, or in the turf council’s guidebook, of how to address PFAS contamination.

Earlier this year, the council told The Inquirer that most turf doesn’t contain “intentionally added PFAS.”

Researchers, though, have found PFAS in the backing material of newer generations of turf, according to the Toxics Use Reduction Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. The university, in response to questions from municipalities about PFAS and turf, wrote that the chemicals might be used to ensure that blades of fake grass do not stick to turf manufacturing equipment.

In June, Melanie Taylor, the turf council’s CEO and president, seemingly acknowledged that current generations of turf contain forever chemicals. In a letter to California legislators — who were advancing legislation to ban in 2024 the manufacture or sale of turf that contains PFAS — Taylor argued that manufacturers and suppliers needed more time to “develop viable alternatives.”

» READ MORE: Congress seeks to spend more than $100 million to rid ‘forever chemicals’ from firefighters’ protective gear

When The Inquirer asked Re-Match about forever chemicals, Larsen cited the council’s original stance that turf doesn’t contain added PFAS.

“In Europe, we have conducted thorough tests and have not seen any traces of PFAS in our turf, but we will continue to monitor this,” Larsen said in an email.

“The process of recycling turf is highly technical,” he continued. “We have set a high standard because we want to create clean products after our recycling process that can be sold in many industries.”

The appeal of such an easy solution to an environmental nightmare surfaced at a Sharon, Mass., building committee meeting that Bennett attended in 2019.

David Warner, a Boston landscape architect, was “waxing poetic about a beautiful recycling facility in Pennsylvania,” Bennett said.

Puzzled, she asked whether he was referring to Re-Match.

“He said, ‘Yes. That’s the one.’”

“Well guess what,” Bennett told him, “it’s not built yet.”

Warner claimed that he’d seen a video about Re-Match’s Pennsylvania factory. Bennett later followed up, and asked Warner, in an email, to share the footage with her.

“I saw this information during a professional conference last year,” he wrote, “and do not believe it is available online.”

For decades, government officials have often overlooked a problem that was hiding right under their feet.

Artificial turf was pioneered and sold in the late 1960s by the Monsanto Chemical Co., as an affordable and effective way to provide children and professional athletes with durable, outdoor playing surfaces. (Philadelphia — and other cities that used turf in their municipal stadiums — discovered in the 1970s and 1980s that the fields actually had to be replaced often.)

Environmental advocates and scientists grew concerned in recent years about the health risks of crumb rubber — tiny pieces of recycled car tires that manufacturers used to make turf more cushioned and durable. The rubber contained heavy metals, including lead and other carcinogenic compounds such as nickel, chromium, benzene, cadmium, and arsenic.

» READ MORE: A TANGLED TIMELINE: Artificial turf was once touted as a “magic carpet.” But some scientists are sounding the alarm because it typically contains “forever chemicals.”

Yet it wasn’t until 2019 that scientists outside of the turf industry determined that the green carpets contained another potential health risk: PFAS.

Little effort has been made, though, to regulate how old turf is reused.

Facebook Marketplace contains pages of listings for artificial turf, ranging in price from $1 to $300 a roll. Other websites offer roadmaps to establishing lucrative turf-for-sale franchises. “You could be making an average of $375 per day selling artificial grass remnants,” one reads, selling remnants for dog runs, putting greens and batting cages.

Some business owners are evasive about why they are stockpiling turf. Jersey Shore Steel Inc. in Jackson Township, Pa., has roughly 100 rolls of aging athletic fields that were delivered by truckload, according to a company official who would identify himself only as Randy.

He said someone — not Re-Match — is paying him to store it.

“I don’t really feel comfortable talking to you about this whole thing,” he said.

About three hours to the south of Jackson Township sits a massive industrial complex, next to a sewage plant in Pottstown. There, in a warehouse, Allen Waterman, owner of APW Enterprises, recycles sand and crumb rubber from used turf fields.

During a recent visit, about 10 to 15 cut-up fields were stacked in rolls on concrete. Large machines whirled loudly as they cleaned, dried and separated the materials. The sand and rubber would be bagged and sold to the turf industry or other manufacturers, Waterman said.

Two fields came all the way from a high school in Newton, Mass.

Fifteen trucks hauling 228 rolls arrived July 31, according to a chain of custody document. (Re-Match played no role in this transaction.)

Waterman said he sends all the carpet to “partners.” When a reporter asked him who they were, he replied: “None of your business.”

The “partners” will extrude the carpet into new plastic lumber products, he said. “This is just starting up and everything is in trial phases right now in regard to the recycling portion.”

Bennett and other activists say aerial photos show that Pennsylvania has received “rolls upon rolls” of discarded turf.

Cities across America spend millions to install artificial turf fields, “but nobody can figure out a way to dispose of it legally and safely,” Bennett said. “Then how is it possible that it’s safe for your kids to play on?”

Few people know as much about playing surfaces in Philadelphia as Michael DiBerardinis, who ran the city’s Parks and Recreation Department for two mayors — Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter — and also served two years as Mayor Jim Kenney’s managing director.

Children have access to nearly a dozen turf fields: five that are maintained by the city in South, North, and Northeast Philly, and six that are managed by the School District of Philadelphia. During his time in city government, DiBerardinis said, no one had yet sounded the alarm about PFAS in artificial turf.

» READ MORE: From Phillies icon to ‘time traveler’: Darren Daulton’s family believes his struggles and cancer were linked to the Vet’s turf

When the city replaced its turf fields in prior administrations, DiBerardinis said, he had no reason to ask where the old turf would be taken.

“There’s now a new understanding about the dangers associated with artificial turf,” he said, “so people better be paying some attention to it.”

The city’s artificial turf fields are about 10 to 13 years-old, according to the Kenney administration. Industry standards suggest, then, that those fields might soon need to be replaced.

Whether that used fake grass will be recycled, resold on some secondary market, or deposited in a landfill is unclear. The city has yet to establish a process for disposing of its old artificial turf.