…a crumbled tyre is still a tyre and remains toxic, regardless of where you put it…

What is crumb rubber? Crumb rubber is made from recycled tyres – they are quite literally ground up into crumbs. These rubber crumbs are then used for a number of purposes including as the infill in artificial turf systems for sports fields. Artificial or synthetic turf has been used since the 1960s – older fields were generally comprised of hard mats of nylon grass and many athletes using these fields complained that the surface was harder than grass and caused more injuries. Newer synthetic turf fields were developed to simulate natural grass fields by using infill material to make the fields softer and by adding plastic grass on the surface. Increasingly, the infill material of choice is crumb rubber, and it can be found in the playing fields of many schools and GAA football pitches across Ireland. A FIFA report in 2017 found that in the period from 2006 to the completion of the report, 3,437 pitches had been certified with the world governing body in 149 countries. [Sam Wallace, http://www.pitchcare.com]