With the exception of cork infill and several mixtures that all use coconut fibres, most organic infills are relatively new to the market. Alternatives like wood chips, corn kernels, olive pits or infill made from celluloses entered the fray only once the proposed ban on the sale of polymeric infill was done and dusted. While all these infills have passed the laboratory tests as per FIFA Quality Turf Programme requirements, few systems with such an infill have gone full-cycle by completing the eight years a synthetic turf field should last minimum. And even if so, they haven’t been extensively studied. How these infills behave in (extremely) wet or dry conditions, under duress or intensive use, and over time, is still unknown.

In the past few years, some attempts have been made to document these impacts. The TestbedNordic study from 2022, a collaboration between the Swedish FA, the City of Solna, the Stockholm Football Association, Vinnova and Sports Labs Nordic, was perhaps the most comprehensive. In this study, four small-sided football fields, all finished with an infill with some form of olive pits or cork, were tested and monitored. This study can be found in the library of www.sportsfields.info.

With more organic alternatives having since come onto the market, the Football Foundation in England decided to take the investigation a step further. The foundation is the UK’s largest sports charity, dedicated to improving grassroots football facilities across England. It is a collaboration between the Premier League, The Football Association, and the UK Government. “Third-generation synthetic turf pitches are essential to the grassroots football community. As we are committed to delivering more sustainable facilities to reduce the impact of 3G pitches on the environment, the use of alternative infill systems for the 100 pitches we fund a year presents us with a potential risk,” Chris Barry outlines. Barry is the Head of Technical at the Football Foundation. “3G pitches are a high quality and indispensable part of modern football. The impact they make cannot be underestimated.” Therefore, the Football Foundation wants to be absolutely sure that its money is well spent. Since 2000, it has delivered sports projects worth over GBP 1.8 billion. “We have a GBP 100mln-plus annual grant giving budget, the majority spent on 3G pitches,” Barry points out. “The Swedish study yielded some interesting results but given the fact that sites experienced different usage making it difficult to compare the various results, we felt a need to do another study, this time in a controlled environment.”