New York Metropolis has 286 municipal synthetic-turf fields, with extra underneath development. In Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan, two fields had been authorised through Zoom conferences throughout the pandemic, and Massimo Strino, an area artist who makes kaleidoscopes, says he discovered solely when he noticed indicators saying the work on one in all his each day walks in Inwood Hill Park, alongside the Hudson River. He joined a marketing campaign in opposition to the plan, gathering greater than 4,300 signatures. “I used to be canvassing each weekend,” Strino says. “You may rely on one hand, actually, the quantity of people that stated they had been in favor.”
However that doesn’t embody the group that pushed for a type of fields within the first place: Uptown Soccer, which affords free and low-cost classes and video games to 1,000 children a yr, principally from underserved immigrant households. “It was turning an unused neighborhood house right into a usable house,” says David Sykes, the group’s government director. “That trumped the type of summary considerations concerning the environmental impacts. I’m not an knowledgeable in synthetic turf, however the parks division assured me that there was no threat of well being results.”
Synthetic turf doesn’t go away. “You’re going to be paying to do away with it. Anyone should take it to a dump, the place it is going to sit for a thousand years.”
Graham Peaslee, emeritus nuclear physicist learning PFAS concentrations, College of Notre Dame
New York Metropolis councilmember Christopher Marte disagrees. He has launched a invoice to ban new synthetic turf from being put in in parks, and he hopes the proposal will probably be taken up by the Parks Committee this spring. Final session, the invoice had 10 cosponsors—that’s quite a bit. Marte says he expects resistance from lobbyists, however there’s precedent. Town of Boston banned synthetic turf in 2022.
Upstate, in a Rochester suburb referred to as Brighton, the college district included synthetic-turf baseball and softball diamonds in a wide-ranging February 2024 capital enchancment proposition. The measure handed. In a public assembly in November 2025, the college board acknowledged the intent to make use of artificial grass—or, as involved dad and mom had it, “to tear up 1 / 4 million sq. toes of this open house and substitute it with synthetic turf,” says David Masur, government director of the environmental group PennEnvironment, whose children attend college in Brighton. Dad and mom and neighborhood members mobilized in opposition to the plan, additional angered when contractors additionally reduce down a beloved 200-year-old tree. Faculty superintendent Kevin McGowan says it’s too late to vary course. Masur has been working to oppose the plan however—he says college boards are making consequential selections about turf with out sharing info or getting enter, though these fields can price thousands and thousands of {dollars} of taxpayer cash.
In brief, the fights can get tense. On Martha’s Winery, in Massachusetts, a gathering about plans to put in a man-made area at an area highschool needed to be ended early amid verbal abuse. A staffer for the native board of well being who voiced concern about PFAS within the turf stop the board after discovering bullet casings in her tote bag, she stated, which she perceived as a demise menace. After an eight-year struggle, the board finally banned synthetic turf altogether.
What occurs subsequent? Effectively, outside synthetic turf lasts solely eight to 12 years earlier than it must be taken up and changed. The Artificial Turf Council says it’s at the least partially recyclable and cites an organization referred to as BestPLUS Plastic Lumber as a purveyor of merchandise comprised of recycled turf. The corporate says one in all its merchandise, a liner referred to as GreenBoard that synthetic turf could be nailed into, is at the least 40% recycled from pretend grass. Joseph Sadlier, vice chairman and basic supervisor of plastics recycling at BestPLUS, says the corporate recycles over 10 million kilos yearly.
But the fabric is piling up. In 2021, a Danish firm referred to as Re-Match introduced plans to open a recycling plant in Pennsylvania and started amassing hundreds of tons of used plastic turf in three places. The corporate filed for chapter in 2025.
In Ithaca, college representatives advised planning boards that it could be attainable to recycle the outdated synthetic turf they ripped out to make approach for the Meinig Fieldhouse. That didn’t occur. An nameless native activist tracked the outdated rolls to a hauling firm a half-hour’s drive south of campus and shared photos of them sitting on the lot, the place they stayed for months. It’s unclear what their final destiny will probably be.
