Triton Group, TenCate and iSustain announced a new recycling partnership that will convert plastic recovered from retired synthetic turf fields into composite railroad ties.
As part of the partnership, Triton will create the capacity to process up to 350,000 pounds of recovered turf plastic per month. At full utilization, that would represent up to 21 million pounds over five years — roughly the amount recovered from 600-800 turf fields, and enough for more than 300,000 composite ties.
“The problem in this industry has never been supply; it has always been demand,” said Greg Janson, president and CEO of Triton Group. “The Triton Tie creates the demand for challenging material like synthetic turf. TenCate has material that needs a solution, and we have a product and a process that provides it. That is what makes this work. The turf comes to us at the end of its useful life on the field, and it leaves here as a railroad tie that will be in the track for decades.”
The Triton Tie is a glass fiber-reinforced composite railroad tie engineered as a one-for-one replacement for wood ties. The Triton Tie meets or exceeds AREMA standards and has been approved by all major railroads in the U.S. Plastic recovered from retired turf will be one of the key ingredients in the composite tie.
“For us, innovation means thinking about the entire life of a field,” said Joe Fields, CEO of TenCate Americas. “We’re constantly looking for ways to make turf better, from how it’s designed and made to how its materials can be reused when a field is replaced. Our partnership with Triton creates an innovative new path to turn recovered turf plastic into composite railroad ties and keep those materials working for years to come.”
Composite railroad ties also eliminate the need for creosote, the chemical treatment used to protect wood ties from decay, while helping preserve mature hardwood trees. At full processing capacity, replacing 300,000 wood ties with composites would avoid the use of nearly 1 million gallons of creosote and keep approximately 75,000 hardwood trees standing.
Under the agreement, TenCate will recover material from retired fields and separate the infill — sand and rubber — from the turf before baling the material and shipping it to Triton. Triton will then use a proprietary process to create a consistent post-consumer resin engineered for durable applications like the Triton Tie.
Triton is targeting April 1, 2027, to begin processing TenCate material, after completion of a new production line.