The development of PEFCRs for synthetic turf sports surfaces

Playing sports is good for individuals and good for society. Regular exercise can reduce the risk of major illnesses, such as coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer and lower the risk of an early death by up to 30%. Participating in sport builds friendships and teaches valuable life skills. Overall, playing sports can significantly enhance physical health, mental well-being and social life.

But, to play sport you need good facilities, and for many communities this is often challenging. Especially when demand is high, the climate hostile or financial resources limited. This is why synthetic turf surfaces have become the surface of choice for many who are responsible for providing sports facilities for the communities and clubs they serve.

Synthetic turf sports surfaces have been in use for over 50 years, the first synthetic turf field being laid in the Houston Astrodome in 1966. Since then, the surfaces have been embraced by the sports world due to their capacity for use for a variety of sports, including football, hockey, rugby, American football, baseball and tennis.

Today, using the latest manufacturing techniques and highest-quality materials, synthetic turf provides a uniform playing surface, which can enhance performance and reduce the risk of injuries. The surfaces are designed to withstand heavy use and harsh weather conditions and, unlike natural grass, there is no mowing, watering or fertilising, which helps reduce the environmental impact of the use phase of a surface.

Synthetic turf surfaces, are, however, made from plastics and rubbers and, as society becomes more aware about the threats these materials can cause to the environment, the synthetic turf industry, like all other parts of the plastics industry, is increasingly being challenged to minimise the impacts its products have, during production, operation and end-of-life disposal.

Understanding the environmental impact a product has during its life is best achieved by undertaking a life-cycle assessment (LCA). An LCA is a systematic method used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product, process or service throughout its entire life. They provide a comprehensive view of the environmental impact from raw material extraction to disposal.

The are many different ways of undertaking an LCA, not all are compatible and some are open to greenwash when companies pick methods that favour their product or process, meaning the transparency consumers and markets desire cannot be assured.

Recognising these limitations, the European Commission has developed the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method of LCA. PEF is intended to create a standardised methodology for assessing and communicating the environmental impact of a product throughout its entire life cycle. This helps ensure that environmental claims are based on comparable and scientifically robust data.

Initially launched in 2014, the European Commission has been testing and refining the PEF concept during a series of development phases. Working closely with a variety of industry sectors, Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs) have been prepared and implemented. These PEFCRs are specific guidelines developed to standardise how the environmental performance of products within a particular category (or sector) is measured and communicated.

PEF are now increasingly being referred to in EU guidance and policy, and they are likely to be incorporated in future legally binding EU regulations, meaning their impact on all industries will grow over the next few years.

The development of our PEFCRs for synthetic turf surfaces was undertaken in accordance with the protocols established by the European Commission. These include:

• Creating a Technical Secretariat to undertake the project. The membership of which had to ensure that the members accounted for over 50% of European production, also included at least one SME company, along with an independent non-governmental organisation.
• Appointing an external review panel that ensured that each stage of the development of the PEFCRs was undertaken in accordance with the European Commission’s rules. The conditions of membership of the review panel was again specified by the European Commission and ours included two LCA expert companies plus a representative of the FIFA Quality Programme.
• Testing the development of the draft PEFCRs by getting companies to undertake PEF studies and reviewing their feedback and results, allowing hotspots and weaknesses to be identified, helping to ensure that the draft rules were practical, accurate and applicable across the whole industry.

Our SME representative was ReMatch from a turf recycling company based in Denmark, and we were honoured that UEFA agreed to their join as our Non-Governmental Organisation.

Our PEFCRs are split into two sub-categories, synthetic turf sports surfaces and synthetic turf landscape turfs. It covers all the various components used in these surfaces (synthetic turf carpet, performance infills, stabilising infills and shockpads), but it does not include the bases on which they are laid. Some may wonder why; the reason being that a base used for synthetic turf surfaces should always be designed to cater for the local ground conditions, climate and intended use. No two bases are the same, the construction methods used differ region to region, and the manufacturers of the synthetic turf surfaces often have little or no input into their design and construction.

To provide the consistency and transparency the European Commission requires, all PEFCRs have to assess and report on sixteen key environmental impact categories. These include:

The PEFCRs allow companies to use two types of environmental data:

• Company-specific datasets, which are directly obtained from specific production facilities, and include all known inputs and outputs of their processes, which are collected, measured or calculated using company-specific data and related emission factors.
• Generic datasets may also be used when company-specific data is not available, or for common activities across industry sectors (e.g. transportation, power generation). These generic datasets provide average data for similar processes or products and are often derived from databases or literature, and a major benefit of working with the European Commission was that our PEFCRs have access to their Environmental Datasets – Version EF 3.1.

Representative products played a crucial role in developing our PEFCRs. These products were selected to represent the average environmental impact of a product category, ensuring that the PEFCRs are applicable and relevant across the whole industry sector.

The European Commission provides two options for defining a representative product: a real product sold on the EU market or a virtual product, modelled on the average EU market share. Like most, we selected a virtual product, ours being based on a third-generation football turf.

The PEFCRs require all PEFs to report all the data for each of the impact categories for each of the life cycle stages; this is a lot of data that is hard for many to understand, so the rules also allow a PEF to focus on the most significant impact categories, and to also calculate a Single PEF Score. This Single PEF Score is a comprehensive measure that summarises the overall environmental impact of a product. The Single PEF Score is calculated as follows:

1. The PEF method evaluates the key environmental impact categories.

2. Each impact category is normalised and weighted, based on its relative importance. This process ensures that the different types of environmental impacts can be compared on a common scale.

3. The normalised and weighted scores for each impact category are then aggregated into a Single PEF Score. This single score is expressed as Environmental Footprint Points (EF points) and provides a straightforward way to understand and compare the overall environmental performance of different products. It is particularly useful for consumers and businesses as it simplifies complex environmental data into an easy-to-understand format, facilitating more informed decision-making and promoting sustainability.

Processing all the PEF data requires specialist software, so ESTC has commissioned PRé Sustainability, based in the Netherlands, to develop a specific tool for synthetic turf surfaces. Using their SimaPro LCA software platform, the tool provides a robust method for conducting PEF assessments.

The software is now commercially available from ESTC to all companies within the synthetic turf industry.

With the positive support of FIFA (International Federation of Association Football), UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) and FIH (International Hockey Federation), ESTC believes Product Environmental Footprinting will quickly become a valuable tool that promotes sustainability by providing a standardised, reliable method for assessing and communicating the environmental impacts of synthetic turf surfaces.

Manufacturers are now starting to use the PEF software tool and are undertaking their first PEF analysis. Initially this will be a time-consuming process, so companies will need a few months to collect, analyse, report and verify their data. ESTC suggests that architects and sports field consultants should start to ask for PEF reports in bid documents from Spring 2025. Once available this will allow them to consider the environmental impact of products alongside their sports performance, durability and cost.

ESTC believes that this transparency and comparability will help consumers make informed choices and encourage industry to adopt greener practices. This will foster a more sustainable market, driving innovation and reducing the overall environmental footprint of synthetic turf surfaces.