Dear Reader

At our upcoming meeting on 19th May, the council will be voting on whether to sign up for the Football Foundation Framework.

This is in order to get money for a new artificial pitch at the Layham Road Sports Ground. The proposed pitch site is near a natural ditch and the river. I do not speak for the council. I'm in favour of a new pitch in principle. But I believe the council should insist on having an artificial pitch that will not leak microplastics into the local environment - including the River Brett.

Artificial pitches have been identified as a significant source of microplastics in rivers. One study reported up to 70kg a year of microplastic leaking from a pitch into nearby watercourses. (See: https://www.fidra.org.uk/artificial-pitches/plastic-pitches/ )

Artificial turf (Picture credit: Pixabay)

Microplastics are bad for marine life, and, as they eventually end up in our drinking water, bad for human health. The EU is right now considering a ban on all intensionally-included microplastics, including those in artificial pitches. But there are solutions. For example, there are alternative materials that can be used in artificial pitches that do not use microplastics. They are available now.

The problem is these alternatives are not widely publicised. The industry is transitioning to the alternative products, but the familiar, easily available but potentially polluting technology is what tends to get promoted. "You can have any colour, as long as it's black" sort of thing.

Clubs that already have the potentially polluting pitches are now supposed to follow very stringent design and maintenance practices to try to reduce and stop the leakage.

These practices are a hidden cost, hard to do, but, more importantly, they do not stop all the leakage. And there is no 'safe threshold' for microplastic pollution. For a brand new pitch, why not insist on a solution that doesn't have any of those risks?

I have made my fellow councillors aware of the issue but I cannot predict how the discussion and the vote will go at Thursday's meeting.

I look forward to hearing all views and am open to considering them, but my current view is that the council should defer signing up to the Football Foundation scheme unless and until we have firm guarantees that the resulting pitch will not involve microplastics.

Huw Roberts

Hadleigh

*Send us your letters, pictures or view points by using the black Nub It button on the news page.

Cllr Huw Roberts (Picture contributed)

Email the editor: [email protected]