Development of Environmentally Friendly Artificial Turf Using New Materials

In recent years, used plastics flowing into the natural environment and ultimately reaching the ocean to become marine plastic waste have become a global social issue.
In sports facilities, since 2000, products that use plastic infill materials such as rubber and resin between long artificial turf blades leaves have been developed and used worldwide. In Japan alone, they have been installed over a total area of more than 20 million square meters due to improved turf durability and playability quality of play. However, test results have shown that these plastic products also escape from facilities and contribute to marine plastic waste.
To address this challenge, Mizuno aimed to create artificial turf that would not produce marine plastic waste, even when the turf’s blades leaves were unintentionally washed into the ocean. Through co-creation with Kaneka Corporation , we developed indoor artificial turf using marine biodegradable polymer .

Key Development Points

Customer Needs

Sports facilities are increasingly installing equipment to prevent plastic from leaking out of their facilities. However, it is difficult to completely prevent this leakage, thus requiring new countermeasures. Regarding infill materials, products using natural materials such as coconut fiber and cork are available, but they often have inferior playability quality of play and durability compared to plastic products, limiting their use. Furthermore, there are no natural materials suitable for artificial turf blades leaves in sports applications.

Co-creation through Adoption of New Materials

If outflow from sports facilities is unavoidable, we considered creating products using materials that would not produce marine plastic waste even if they flowed into the ocean. From the beginning of development, we focused on biodegradable resins, but deemed them unsuitable as artificial turf materials due to issues such as “lack of flexibility” and “inability to biodegrade in seawater.”
It was then that we learned about the existence of KANEKA Biodegradable Polymer Green Planet TM,^*1 which biodegrades in seawater into water and carbon dioxide. Mizuno approached Kaneka Corporation, the developer, to propose collaborative development of artificial turf. With their enthusiastic agreement, joint development began in 2021.

*1 Biomass-derived biodegradable biopolymer developed by Kaneka

Co-creation Process

Development initially began with infill materials, which have high outflow volumes from facilities. However, driven by the strong belief that “when it comes to artificial turf, it’s really about the blade leaf part,” both companies decided to take on the challenge of developing artificial turf blades leaves first, which was a new endeavor for both parties.
In the early development stage, we succeeded in creating shapes similar to current plastic artificial turf blades leaves, but durability was a challenge. Through repeated adjustment of resin formulations, prototyping, and testing, we successfully developed artificial turf blades leaves and infill materials that, while using biodegradable resin as their material, possess durability and sports performance comparable to current plastic products.
Currently, we are also working on developing artificial turf for outdoor use and landscaping applications.

Future Development

We believe that the sports surfaces used in stadiums and other venues will require not only high durability and sports performance, but also high environmental performance in the future.
While many products are labeled as “environmentally friendly,” most address only a limited range of environmental indicators. In contrast, this product can be positioned as a high-performance, environmentally friendly artificial turf that addresses multiple environmental challenges, including marine plastic waste mitigation, GHG (greenhouse gas) emission reduction, and reduced petroleum usage.
Mizuno began global environmental conservation activities in September 1991, and has been working for over 30 years to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and waste, and to promote recycling. Moving forward, we will continue to create and deliver new products and materials that protect the global environment to people around the world through collaboration with companies possessing innovative technologies.