More than three hundred trucks will drive back and forth from Wednesday to remove large mountains of infill from synthetic turf fields from the TUF site in Dongen. In total, ten thousand tons of sand and rubber (infill) will be driven away. The synthetic turf carpets will not removed until later. Recycling company Advanced Sports Installations Rotterdam, a subsidairy of Advanced Sports Installations Europe from Estonia, has been commissioned by TUF to clear the site.

The first trucks will leave at seven in the morning. If everything goes well, one after the other will leave with kilos of sand and rubber from the company on the industrial site Tichelrijt. It is not yet possible to say exactly how long the removal will take, according to a spokesperson for the municipality of Dongen. “We can not attach a time forecast to this. But it is a matter of as short as possible. We are not talking about months here.”

The sand and rubber are brought to Grond- en Reststoffenbank South Netherlands in Helvoirt. They have the capacity and license to store and process this.

TUF Recycling is a company that mainly recycled artificial turf mats on paper, tv program Zembla showed in September last year. TUF collected the mats, knocked them out and then separated the sand and rubber from the turf. But there was absolutely no question of recycling at that location. After a major fire in October last year, the company closed.

The mountains of synthetic turf and infill grew and grew. At the end of last year, the municipality of Dongen therefore imposed several burdens under administrative enforcement. These meant, among other things, that the company was not allowed to store more infill and artificial turf mats than allowed in the permit.