NewGrass Landscape & Design  continues to set the standard for safe, eco-friendly synthetic lawn installations in California by refusing to use controversial crumb rubber as infill.

NewGrass Landscape & Design installs NewGrass® synthetic lawns using GreenFill, an environmentally friendly infill alternative, says NGL&D operations director Larry Reno.

The debate over crumb rubber infill is being waged among environmental groups, concerned parent organizations, the rubber industry and some members of the synthetic grass industry. And it’s true that a final verdict is not in.

“There’s not an answer everyone agrees on, but we’d rather err on the side of being responsible when it comes to public health,” Reno says. “That’s the first and main reason we have chosen to stay away from crumb rubber infill.”

The nonprofit Grassroots Environmental Education has been among the strongest voices against crumb rubber infill.

“This crumb rubber is a material that cannot be legally disposed of in landfills or ocean-dumped because of its toxicity,” says Grassroots Environmental Education executive director Patti Wood. “Why on earth should we let our children play on it?”
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GreenFill is a conventional granular aggregate that in a more generic form is often used under roadways and railway tracks and in many other applications.

In addition to being safer for children and pets than crumb rubber, and being more environmentally responsible, GreenFill and other alternatives also perform better than crumb rubber on artificial lawns.

“Because it is a heavier raw material than crumb rubber, GreenFill won’t bounce up and out of the grass and into the air as easily as crumb rubber,” Reno says. “Also, it won’t wash away as readily as crumb rubber, especially on sloped terrain.”

According to accepted reports, recycled crumb rubber – usually from used tires – contains chemicals either known or suspected of causing health effects. Used tires are commonly composed in part of ethylene-propylene and styrene-butadiene combined with vulcanizing agents, fillers, plasticizers, and antioxidants in different quantities, depending on the manufacturer. Tire rubber also contains polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

After extensively studying the available research on crumb rubber use, Janelle Sorensen of the web site Healthy Child Healthy World concluded, “So often we dive into the unknown when we start using new products. We assume that they have been comprehensively tested for safety, but they aren’t required to be. When will we learn our lesson? It’s better to be safe than sorry, so while I’m still unclear about whether recycled tires are safe or not, I’m advocating for a moratorium on its use until we know more.”

In 2007, the nonprofit Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI) commissioned a study to determine whether toxic compounds from crumb rubber could be released into air or water. The EHHI report, Artificial Turf, “definitively confirmed” the irritants benzothiazole and n-hexadecane; butylated hydroxyanisole, a carcinogen and suspected endocrine disruptor; and 4-(t-octyl) phenol, a corrosive that can be injurious to mucous membranes.

The Synthetic Turf Council said in a follow-up statement that the EHHI’s “claims of toxicity are based on extreme laboratory testing such as the use of solvents and high temperatures to generate pollutants.”

“It is clear the recycled rubber crumbs are not inert, nor is a high temperature or severe solvent extraction needed to release metals, volatile, or semi-volatile organic compounds,” said David Brown, EHHI’s director of public health toxicology.

The bottom line is that with the jury still out on crumb rubber and alternatives as good as GreenFill are available, NewGrass Landscape and Design refuses to use crumb rubber infill.

“We want to be the leaders in the artificial grass industry – the environmental leaders, the manufacturing leaders and ultimately the sales leaders,” Reno says. “Using an alternative to crumb rubber that we know is safe for kids and pets, and that works even better than crumb rubber as a synthetic grass infill, is simply the right thing to do. It’s the right thing for the environment and for the safety of the kids and dogs that play on NewGrass®.”

With major product improvements and enhanced customer care, NewGrass Landscape & Design has strengthened its commitment to being green in every sense of the word.

As a major distributor of NewGrass^® artificial grass, NewGrass Landscape & Design is adopting the NewGrass^® Certified 100% Eco-Friendly Pledge. The commitment encompasses three major areas: to use the most environmentally conscious products available, to assertively support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and to professionally recycle NewGrass^® at the end of its usable life.

“NewGrass^® is leading the way in this industry when it comes to being eco-friendly, pro-active and acting responsibly,” says Larry Reno, director operations for NewGrass Landscape & Design. “We believe we can do more to offer an environmentally safe and aware product and act as a good steward of the environment as a company.”

No Nylon, No Lead, Renewable and Recycled Resources

NewGrass^® artificial lawn is 100 percent polyethylene – no nylon! And, it’s 100% recyclable.

Nylon and nylon-blend synthetic lawn blades have been proven to have potentially unsafe levels of lead because of the lead chromate pigments used to ensure colorfastness. Polyethylene blades don’t use lead chromate pigment. NewGrass® lawns have been tested by the State of California and found to be lead-free.

NewGrass^® also has a new EnviroCel™ backing that replaces over 90 percent of the oil-based compounds found on previous generations with bio-based compounds that are derived from domestically-grown soybeans – a renewable resource!

No Crumb Rubber

NewGrass Landscape & Design refuses to use crumb rubber as infill. According to accepted reports, recycled crumb rubber – usually from used tires – contains chemicals either known or suspected of causing health effects.

“The jury is still out on the crumb-rubber debate, but we’d rather err on the side of safety and public health, especially when a better alternative is available,” Reno says.

The NewGrass® Carbon-Offset Pledge

For every square foot of NewGrass^® installed by NewGrass Landscape & Design, NewGrass will make a donation to the Carbon Fund, a non-profit organization that is leading the fight against global-warming climate change.

The Remove & Recycle Pledge

If a customer ever wants to take up their NewGrass^®lawn, NewGrass Landscape & Design will remove and properly recycle it at the end of the lawn’s useful life.

Orange County, Calif. – The cities in this southern California county that still ban synthetic lawns are considering lifting the restrictions and are meanwhile overlooking violations, according to recent news reports.

Ironically, residents in the cities that ban artificial grass are being offered rebates from their local water district if they install synthetic lawn to encourage water conservation.

The restrictions generally were put in place several years ago, primarily for aesthetic reasons, according to The Los Angeles Times. At the time, people associated fake grass with the nubby, bright green, carpet-looking type of product that originally was used on football fields.

Now, heightened concerns over water conservation and a greater appreciation for the more natural look and feel of today’s synthetic lawns like NewGrass^® are pushing the cities to reconsider their bans.

California is two months into a state-declared drought. But even though cities are not enforcing the artificial lawn bans and are considering lifting them, residents of some cities have been denied the county rebates because of the bans, according to the Times.

“We want people to change their behavior and use more water-efficient products for landscaping,” Orange County Municipal Water District spokeswoman Darcy Burke said of the rebates in an interview with the Times.

Garden Grove, Stanton, La Palma, Orange and Santa Ana still ban residents from installing artificial lawns. But each city receives its water from the Orange County Municipal Water District, which offers rebates to customers who install faux grass, including NewGrass^® and other synthetic lawns.

Officials with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a consortium of 26 cities and water districts in the region, told the Times they didn’t know of any cities outside Orange County that ban fake lawns like NewGrass^®. In addition to conserving water, NewGrass^® is 100% Eco-Friendly, from the way it is manufactured – using recyclable and recycled materials – to the company’s promise to remove and properly recycle a NewGrass® lawn at the end of its useful life.

“It never occurred to me that in a state that has an extreme water shortage . . . every city wouldn’t do everything they possibly could to save water,” Cookie Smith, a Garden Grove resident who is leading efforts to get the city’s ban lifted, told the Times.

Here is a roundup by the Times of current bans in Orange County and how city officials are addressing them:

Santa Ana allows “turf or acceptable dry climate ground cover” in the front yard. For years, that was interpreted to exclude artificial lawns, but city staff is revisiting the regulation.

La Palma calls for exactly “70% of the front yard” to be planted, which effectively prohibits artificial grass in that area. City staff is looking into changes that would allow synthetic grass, and city is not actively enforcing the ban in the meantime.

In Orange, officials said ordinances neither allow nor prohibit artificial lawns.

In Garden Grove, an ordinance banning simulated greenery dates from 1992 and was based almost entirely on the aesthetics of the products sold at the time. The City Council met recently to reconsider the ban but has yet to make a decision. In the meantime, it also has asked staff to refrain from enforcing the ban.

NewGrass^® is proud to be an ally in the EPA’s GreensScape Program and the only artificial lawn that is Certified 100% Eco-Friendly, from the way it is manufactured to the company’s pledge to properly recycle any NewGrass^® lawn at the end of its usable life, at no cost to the customer.

NewGrass^® has been featured on Bob Vila, The Balancing Act on Lifetime Television, Fine Living TV’s American Shopper, Makeover and a Movie and a special Think Green episode of Designing Spaces on We tv and TLC - The Learning Channel.