TenCate Grass launches synthetic turf recycling program

TenCate Grass recently launched a synthetic turf recycling program in partnership with ExxonMobil and Cyclyx International.

“At TenCate, we are committed to leading the industry and moving sustainability forward in a meaningful way,” Joe Fields, president and CEO of TenCate, said. “We understand the issue of end-of-life synthetic turf and we have taken it upon ourselves to find a true solution for the entire industry. Our goal is to keep turf out of landfills and put it back to use.”

The program starts by shredding 50 aged high school and college campus turf fields, mostly from California. TenCate then delivers the shredded turf from California to Texas, where Cyclyx will further pre-process it before sending the turf to ExxonMobil’s Baytown advanced recycling facility.

With ExxonMobil’s proprietary Exxtend technology, the end-of-life turf breaks down into raw materials used to make new products.

“Our advanced recycling technology has already processed millions of pounds of otherwise difficult to recycle plastics, like food packaging and artificial turf, that are generally not recycled today,” Dave Andrew, vice president of new market development at ExxonMobil, said. “With our scalable technology and collaborations like this one alongside TenCate Grass and Cyclyx, we are helping to meet the growing demand for circular products.”

After this initial phase is complete, TenCate said it plans to expand the initiative across the U.S. In North America alone, the total value of installed synthetic turf systems is about $2.7 billion in 2020, according to the Synthetic Turf Council. This translates into roughly 265 million square feet of installed turf according to TenCate.

“This collaboration with TenCate and ExxonMobil is notable in many ways,” Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Cyclyx, said. “It allows the ability to aggregate new types of waste plastic materials that have historically been ignored; it not only allows recycling of that turf material but provides a fully circular recycling option; and it shows the power of the collaboration that can help drive our mission of increasing the recyclability of waste plastic from 10 percent to 90 percent.”